What has been perhaps the most unpredictable Best Picture race in years has finally come to an end, and Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway got it right on the first try this time!
The Oscars got Best Picture right on the first try this year!
What has been perhaps the most unpredictable Best Picture race in years has finally come to an end, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway awarding The Shape of Water with the top honors during Sunday's 90th annual Academy Awards.
"Growing up in Mexico as a kid, I was a big admirer of foreign films like E.T.," Guillermo del Toro said. "A few weeks ago, Steven Spielberg said, 'If you find yourself at the podium, remember you are part of a legacy, part of a world of filmmakers.' And I am proud."
He concluded his speech with an encouraging messaging to young filmmakers watching the telecast, "This is a door," he held up his Oscar statuette, "Kick it open and come in!"
The Shape of Water was nominated for 13 Academy Awards in total, the most of any movie this year and won four: Best Picture, Best Director (del Toro), Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat) and Production Design (Paul D. Austerberry, Shane Vieau and Jeffrey A. Melvin).
The film, which was written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, directed by del Toro and stars Hawkins, Jenkins and Spencer, as well as Michael Shannon and Doug Jones as the amphibian creature, has had an impressive run up to the Oscars. The Shape of Water premiered during last year's Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion for Best Film, before taking top honor at the Critics' Choice Awards and PGA Awards.
Whether you agree with the Academy's choice or not -- and there's bound to be plenty of debate over whether the right film won -- we can all be thankful that there wasn't a repeat of last year's La La Land-Moonlight fiasco, a moment when "all hell broke loose," host Jimmy Kimmel recalls.
"The worst thing the Oscars can be is boring, right? And that definitely made them not boring," Kimmel told ET, though the Academy made sure there were extra precautions put in place this year, including a third PricewaterhouseCoopers auditor who was tasked with memorizing every single winner.
As for the whole double envelope thing? "I figured there was one," Kimmel said with a laugh ahead of the show. "Seems like one would be enough envelopes. Two is asking for trouble. One is the good number. I don't even know, actually. I am interested to find out if there are still two..."
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