Oscars by the Numbers: Quantifying Hollywood’s Biggest Night

The 96th Academy Awards happens on Sunday, March 10. I’m writing this on the Wednesday before—and, if all goes to plan, you’ll be reading our data story on the Oscars on Friday.  

(Unless you’re reading the Domo on Data backlog, in which case—hi! You can find our full log of stories here.) 

I share this time stamp because it means one critical thing, and it’s something many of us have in common: I’m in a rush to build something worthy of our loyal readership.  

So I put the new Domo.AI dashboard and viz creation tools to work for me. If I’m being totally honest, this freaks me out. I spent most of my career doing the things this tool does in…three minutes.  

As of March 2024, we’re still optimizing the tools (they’re not yet in beta). But even though the output isn’t perfect (yet), it gives me a head start, and I can tweak as needed. Keep reading to catch our take.  

Which films have won the most? 

Let’s start by looking at some of the top winners—actors and films—of all time. The first thing I notice is that some films have multiple iterations. Different films, same name and story, over and over.  

At first, my viz showed “A Star Is Born” as having the most nominations. But that movie was made at four different times. There’s “A Star Is Born,” which was made in 2018 with Lady Gaga, of course, but also versions released in 1976, 1954, and 1937.  

You might think this phenomenon doesn’t happen often. But as you can see, there are 87 movie names made at least twice.  

So, once we deal with the multiples and look at film name and year, we see the most nominations go to “Titanic” made in 1997. The most wins go to “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” from 2001.   

Let’s look at actors and actresses 

Now, looking at the actor and actress award categories, we see that Meryl Streep, the queen, has 21 nominations. But Streep actually falls short on wins to Katharine Hepburn who has four wins while Streep is tied with five others with three wins.  

See the data for yourself—and enjoy the Oscars! 

Lastly, here is the full data set if you want to dig into specific categories and winners on your own. 

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