Hollywood is buzzing over this morning’s Academy Award nominations. And, while the Internet fights over the snubs and surprises (and everyone bemoans the lack of any diversity among acting nominees), executives at 20th Century Fox can toast their success after earning a leading 26 total nominations this year.
Bolstering Fox’s Oscars haul is leading film nominee The Revenant, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and was directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, with 12 total nominations. Those included acting nods for DiCaprio and supporting star Tom Hardy as well as another directing nod for Iñárritu (who won the directing award last year for helming 2015 Best Picture winner Birdman). Fox also scored seven nominations for the Matt Damon-starring sci-fi film The Martian and the studio shared Bridge of Spies‘ six nominations with its co-distributor Walt Disney (DIS). Fox also had the most nominations, and ended up with the most wins, in 2015.
(Fox Searchlight, which is also owned by parent company 21st Century Fox (FOX), received three nominations for the film Brooklyn.)
Disney finished a distant second to Fox in the Oscar nominations tally, with 14 total nods that included five nominations for the box office record-setting Star Wars: The Force Awakens (though mostly in technical categories) as well as two for the animated hit Inside Out.
After The Revenant, the second-leading nominated film is high-octane thriller Mad Max: Fury Road, from Warner Bros. (TWX), which notched 10 Oscar nominations. Mad Max scored nods for Best Picture as well as directing, cinematography, and costumes, among others while helping Warner Bros. finish third among studios with 11 total nominations. Meanwhile, independent studio The Weinstein Company scored nine total nominations—six for Cate Blanchett—starring Carol and three for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight—but the studio was shut out of the Best Picture race despite critics’ love for Carol.
The Academy Awards air on ABC on Feb. 28.
