娱乐英语新闻:Oscar organizer changes rules for best picture nomination

LOS ANGELES, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Motion pictures vying for the best picture honor in the 84th Academy Awards held earlier 2012 will come from a field consisting of five to 10 movies, as the Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted on Tuesday to change the rules regarding the selection of best pictures and other procedures, adding a twist to the competition.

Before agreeing on a motion which calls for the institution of a system that will produce anywhere between five and 10 nominees in the best film category, the governors determined that 5 percent of first place votes should be the minimum in order to receive a nomination, resulting in a slate of anywhere from five to 10 movies.

However, that number won't be made public until the Best Picture nominees were announced in January 2012.

If this system had been in effect from 2001 to 2008, or before the expansion to a slate of 10, there would have been years that yielded five, six, seven, eight and nine nominees.

The change was recommended by retiring Academy executive director Bruce Davis, Academy President Tom Sherak said. Davis first broke the idea to Sherak and incoming CEO Dawn Hudson, and then to the governors.

"With the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers, we've been looking not just at what happened over the past two years, but at what would have happened if we had been selecting 10 nominees for the past 10 years," Sherak said.

The final round of voting for Best Picture will continue to employ the preferential system, regardless of the number of nominees, to ensure that the winning picture has the endorsement of more than half of the voters, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The awards ceremony will be held on Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theater at Hollywood & Highland Center and broadcast live in more than 200 countries worldwide by the ABC Television Network.