How many Oscars categories have been discontinued?

The Oscars have been synonymous with prowess in cinema and filmmaking, but over the years, more than 5 categories have been discontinued.

There have been 94 ceremonies so far since the award's inception. Hosts have taken charge since the beginning, and awards like Best Actor/Actress, and Best Cinematography, have always been handed out generously. However, there are some categories from the Oscars that just get lost in time.

There are several awards that fans don't even remember. Some Oscars are so unfamiliar that if we look back, it all feels like a distant dream. Some were discontinued right after the first ceremony.

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Discontinued Oscars categories

1) Best Director, Comedy Picture, and Best Director, Dramatic Picture categories

During the very first Oscar, the show featured a pair of categories for filmmakers: Best Director, Comedy Picture, and Best Director, Dramatic Picture. The only winners in this category were Frank Borzage for 7th Heaven and Lewis Milestone for Two Arabian Knights.

The following year saw a single Best Director category getting implemented. Similarly, Best Picture was split up between the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture and the Academy Award for Best Unique and Artistic Direction. Wings and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans were the only ones to bag it.

In a conversation with Time in 2018, film historian Monica Roxanne Sandler revealed the reason behind it. She said that the terms used to distinguish these categories felt too similar to one another.

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2) Best Short Subject - Comedy, and Best Short Subject - Novelty categories

Several award categories were introduced and axed in quick succession in the 30s. A pair of categories, Best Short Subject - Comedy and Best Short Subject - Novelty, were introduced. However, would be replaced by Best Short Subject - 1 Reel and Best Short Subject - 2 Reel by the end of the 1930s. In the late 1950s, it was boiled down to the single Best Live-Action Short Film category.

More categories like Best Assistant Director, which allowed up to seven winners, and Best Dance Direction were ditched.

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3) Best Original Score category

In the mid-1990s, the Best Original Score category was divided into two, with the distinction between the categories being genres. This meant there were categories like Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score.

The decision to drop these categories was because many animated Disney musicals dominated the category in the early 1990s. People were voting for movies with grand musical numbers rather than focusing on instrumental scores of motion pictures.

There was also a Best Sound Editing category which was previously known as the Best Sound Effects category. The lifeline of this category has been rather bizarre as it was being awarded on and off as a Special Achievement category. Eventually, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing would be merged into one and this would form the Academy Award for Best Sound category.

This would result in mass hysteria and confusion in the industry as it was very hard to understand the differences between the Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing categories.

The 2023 Oscars will take place at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, California on March 12, 2023. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who also hosted the Oscars in 2017 and 2018 will be hosting for the third time this year.