85th Annual Academy Awards Will Have Five Best Original Song Nominees

In past years the nominations for Best Original Song at the Oscars has always been a bit different than the other categories. Unlike Best Director, Best Actor, or just about every other award where there would be at least five nominations, the Best Original Song has long had a minimum quota of two, which is why only "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets and "Real in Rio" from Rio were nominated for the prize last year. That rule will be changed for the 85th Annual Academy Awards.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts And Sciences has announced via press release that there will be a minimum of five nominees for Best Original Song at next year's award show. In previous years, only songs with an average score of 8.25 or higher would be nominated for the Oscar. In previous years, if no song had a score higher than 8.25 there would be no nominees, while if only one song had a score that high they would nominate the next highest ranking song to give the first song competition. Now, however, the Academy will simply choose the five highest-scoring songs for the given year.

This is the first major change to the category since 1944. Before then any number of songs could be nominated (that year 14 songs were listed in the category, which is what prompted the rule change). Last year was the first year in Academy Award history that only two songs were nominated. In 1988, 2005, and 2008 only three songs were nominated while in 2010 only four songs were nominated. The only other rule change this year was to rename the Art Direction award, which will now be known as the Production Design award.

The 85th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.