'The Revenant' News: Ryuichi Sakamoto's Score Disqualified From Oscar Race
The Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences has announced that Alejandro González Iñárritu's "The Revenant" is not eligible for Best Score.
As always, the Academy had some controversial choices when it came to choosing their nominations. This year's race will not be any different. The score to Iñárritu's new film was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it did not land on the longlist for the award, which includes 112 Original scores.
According to Indiewire, the reason for the decision was the academy could "not separate out his contributions from his two collaborators." As a result, Fox is appealing the ruling decision, especially since Ennio Morricone's latest score for the "The Hateful Eight" only includes 30 minutes of original music, while the film is three hours long.
John Williams' new score for "The Force Awakens" similarly was deemed eligible, even though the film has a number of cues taken from previous films.
This is not the first time the Academy has done something controversial in this category. Iñárritu's 2006 film "Babel" won Best Score for Gustavo Santaolalla, but that film contained a lot of older music not composed for the film. Even "The King's Speech," which got nominated for the category, contained much more music from Mozart and Beethoven than from Alexandre Desplat, who was nominated.
It will be interesting to see if Fox wins the appeal, as "The Revenant" is looking to be a huge Oscar contender.
The film is currently nominated for four Golden Globes and looks like it will be nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture. Additionally, it seems like Leonardo DiCaprio will finally win his first Oscar for his role in the film.
"The Revenant" tells the story of Hugh Glass, who sets out to get revenge against those who left him for dead.The film is slated for release on Dec. 25.