Petition

Will Leo Win an Oscar? These People Sure Hope So

He’s already won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for his leading role in The Revenant this awards season. And all signs point to Leonardo DiCaprio winning his first Oscar this Sunday. That should make a handful of petition starters very happy.

Nearly 120 Oscar petitions have been started on Change.org since 2011, and 17 of those petitions ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to award Leo with the coveted statuette, which he has now been nominated for five times as an actor and once as a producer.

Fans of the actor from the US, UK, Mexico, France, India, Russia, and Germany have all petitioned on his behalf. One of the most recent petitions is from Spain where the petition starter, Yumiko Chiba has also started a community that is pulling for the win.

More than 10 of the “Give Leo an Oscar” petitions were started in the last six months, reinforcing just how strongly feel about his performance of The Revenant. An additional five petitions were started in the lead up or immediately following the 2014 Academy Awards, when DiCaprio was nominated for The Wolf of Wall Street, but lost to Matthew McConaughey.

Most of the petitions point to Leo’s long career in which has has starred in some of the last decades most popular and successful films. But one petition starter probably sums up the reason he should win better than any other: “Because LEONARDO DICAPRIO!!!”

Of course, the Oscar petitions we found aren’t all about Leonardo DiCaprio. People have petitioned about a variety of topics related to the award show and from every corner of the world. While many of those petitions came from the U.S. — 62% to be exact — people have started petitions about the Oscars in 16 other countries as well.

As we poured through the list of petitions, we noticed two other major trends among petitions started between 2015 and now:

  1. People are upset about the lack of diversity among Oscar nominees.
    When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced this year’s nominees in January, the media and public were quick to notice that all of the nominees in the performance categories are white. As a result, there were 10 petitions related to the lack of diversity among this year’s Oscar nominees. Seven of those petitions ask industry professionals to boycott the show —  along with Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee, and Will Smith, among others — like this petition, started by Stop Racism, which has nearly 130 signatures. Another petition asks the nominees to boycott the show by promising to refuse the Oscar if they win.

  2. People want Stanley Tucci to host the show.
    Seventeen of the 35 petitions requesting hosts for the award show ask that Stanley Tucci host it as his Hunger Games character, Caesar Flickerman. While it is now closed, the most popular petition had more than 7,100 signatures (if you want to see this happen, here is an open petition asking for Tucci as the host). Other proposed hosts include Deadpool, Steve Harvey, Llyod Kaufman, Key and Peele, and Chris Pratt and Chris Evans (as superheroes).

These are three trends that stood out among the petitions we looked at, but there is a wide range in the Oscar-related issues people petitioned about.

There were petitions to get films, such as the The LEGO Movie, nominated, petitions asking celebrities to donate their gift bags to charities and wear green ribbons for climate change awareness, and petitions requesting that the Academy host the Oscars on Saturday instead of Sunday.

Is there anything that you want to see Change about the Oscars? What about the film industry as a whole?

Written by
Change.org
February 25, 2016 10:23 pm