The Television Academy has announced additional rules changes for the 72nd Emmy Awards competition, including a restructuring of how nominees are selected in each category.
To align the nominations selection process across all awards categories and to allow for more inclusiveness in the recognition of excellence, the number of nominees per category will now be based on the number of submissions in each category. Emmy submissions for 2020 have increased by 15% over the previous competition year.
“The increase in submissions is a reflection of the number of new voices, new television platforms and a tremendous growth in content from existing platforms across our industry,” said Television Academy chairman and CEO Frank Scherma. “Despite production suspension resulting from COVID-19, there is a wealth of excellent work submitted for this year’s competition.”
The number of nominations in a category will be determined as follows:
- 1-19 submissions: A sliding scale between zero to 4 nominations
- 20-80 submissions: 5 nominations
- 81-160 submissions: 6 nominations
- 161-240 submissions: 7 nominations
- More than 240 submissions: 8 nominations
Comedy and Drama Series categories will have eight nominations each, regardless of the number of submissions received. Paired performer categories (i.e., supporting actor comedy and supporting actress comedy) will have parity in the number of nominations.
Finally, this new rule eliminates the previous 2% rule, which specified that in categories with five nominees, if the fifth and sixth top vote-getters were within 2% of each other, both would be nominated.
A full list of Emmy Rules and Procedures can be found here.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More