2016 Oscars: Spotlight Wins Best Picture, Leo Finally Gets His Oscar

Erik Anderson February 28, 2016

**Spotlight wins the 2016 Oscar for Best Picture**

Spotlight pulled out an 11th hour surprise by pulling out a Best Picture win with just one other award, Best Original Screenplay. That hasn’t happened since 1953 when The Greatest Show on Earth won essentially the same two awards (The Greatest Show on Earth won Best Writing, Motion Picture – an expired category). Spotlight‘s win keeps the history of pre-December releases winning Best Picture. It marks the first win for distributor and producer Open Road Films and Participant Media.

The evening began with the screenplay awards, which went to Spotlight and The Big Short, which were widely predicted. Next came Supporting Actress for Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl. She won the Screen Actors Guild award ahead of tonight’s Oscar win.

Mad Max: Fury Road was the top winner of the night with six awards, including all of the techs except Cinematography, which went to Emmanuel Lubeski for The Revenant. His win puts him in exclusive territory by being the first and only cinematographer to win three years in a row. His win for The Revenant for follows his wins for Birdman in 2015 and Gravity in 2014.

A huge shock came when Ex Machina broke a 45-year record in Visual Effects by being a non-Best Picture nominee to win over not just one but two Best Picture nominees in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant.

The next major shock came when perceived frontrunner in Supporting Actor, Sylvester Stallone, was bested by Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. Rylance, who won the BAFTA, was beaten by Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) at the Screen Actors Guild and Stallone at the Golden Globes.

One expected win was Ennio Morricone in Original Score for The Hateful Eight. The 87-year old composer, a six time nominee, had never won a competitive Oscar until tonight.

The lead acting categories went to the Golden Globe/SAG/BAFTA winners, Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) and Brie Larson (Room), with DiCaprio fighting a 20-year battle for an Oscar and finally receiving his perceived long-overdue Oscar for The Revenant.

The FULL list of winners of the 88th Academy Awards:

Original screenplay

“Spotlight” Written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy

Adapted screenplay

“The Big Short” Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Alicia Vikander in “The Danish Girl”

Achievement in costume design

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Jenny Beavan

Achievement in production design

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Production Design: Colin Gibson; Set Decoration: Lisa Thompson

Achievement in makeup and hairstyling

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin

Achievement cinematography

“The Revenant,” Emmanuel Lubeski

Achievement in film editing

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Margaret Sixel

Achievement in sound editing

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Mark Mangini and David White

Achievement in sound mixing

“Mad Max: Fury Road” Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo

Achievement in visual effects

“Ex Machina” Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett

Best animated short film

“Bear Story” Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala

Best animated feature film of the year

“Inside Out” Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Mark Rylance in “Bridge of Spies”

Best documentary short subject

“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness” Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Best documentary feature

“Amy” Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees

Best live action short film

“Stutterer” Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage

Best foreign language film of the year

“Son of Saul” Hungary

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

“Writing’s On The Wall” from “Spectre”
Music and Lyric by Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

“The Hateful Eight” Ennio Morricone

Achievement in directing

“The Revenant” Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Brie Larson in “Room”

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Revenant”

Best motion picture of the year

“Spotlight” Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Pagon Faust, Producers

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.