12 Wild Oscar Conspiracy Theories People Actually Believe

There’s an old saying that goes ‘anybody can be bought for the right price’. Apparently, that extends to Academy Award voters too who have been accused on more than one occasion of allowing themselves to fall prey to a bit of bribery.

The official terminology for trying to persuade voters to support a certain film is ‘Oscar campaigning’. On the least sneaky level this manifests itself in the form of tonnes of billboards across Los Angeles emblazoned with the phrase ‘for your consideration’ in the lead up to the Oscars imploring Academy members to vote a certain way.

But if you’re a producer or Oscar-hungry actor with enough cash behind you to hire a crafty publicist to up the ante and your chances of winning, then the sky’s the limit. Members of the Academy voting body have been known to be invited to elite, star-studded screenings of films and even gifted things like iPhones, dinners and expensive trips in order to sway their vote.

Fairly recently, film producer Harvey Weinstein has been accused of aggressively ‘campaigning’ for both Shakespeare in Love and Chicago to win the Oscar for Best Picture over more worthy contenders like Saving Private Ryan and The Pianist while in 2010 French producer Nicolas Chartier was banned from the Academy Awards ceremony for emailing voters asking them to favour The Hurt Locker over a certain ‘$500 million film’, a reference to James Cameron’s big budget Avatar.

So rather than a glittering affair rewarding all who is talented within the film industry, it might very well be the case that more than a few Oscar winners are actually the product of good, old-fashioned palm-greasing and payola.