Walt Disney might have the most Oscar wins personally, but the Mouse House itself has proven far less lucky with respect to Best Picture. Again, if we disclude both Searchlight Pictures and 20th Century Studios (née Fox), Walt Disney Studios has amassed 13 Best Picture Oscar nods but no wins between movies it’s released through Walt Disney Pictures (four nods), Touchstone Pictures (six nods), Hollywood Pictures (two nods), and Marvel Studios (one nod). Thankfully, the Oscar mathing gets a little less convoluted when it comes to the rest of the Hollywood “Big Five,” with Universal and Warner Bros. having both won Best Picture nine times (the same total as MGM), 20th Century Studios having 10 wins, and Paramount sitting pretty with 11 victories.
That leaves Columbia Pictures as the current reigning champion with 12 Best Picture Oscars to its name. Funny as it is to realize that record belongs to the same studio that released “Madame Web,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” and “Kraven the Hunter” over the span of 10 months in 2024 (low blow, I know, but them’s the facts), you also have to remember that Columbia Pictures was an Oscar-winning machine around the middle of the 20th century. Between “All the King’s Men,” “From Here to Eternity,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “A Man for All Seasons,” and “Oliver!,” the studio added seven Best Picture Oscars to its belt from 1950-1969 alone. It was only after that Columbia slowed down; it had to wait 11 years for its next win (for “Kramer vs. Kramer” in 1980), followed by “Gandhi” miraculously beating “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” for Best Picture in 1983 (which even its director, Richard Attenborough, felt was nonsense), and, most recently, “The Last Emperor” being granted that same honor back in 1988.
Will Columbia find a way to defend its title in the foreseeable future? It’s not impossible. Lest we forget, the studio was still a Best Picture Oscar nomination magnet in the early 2010s, releasing “The Social Network,” “Moneyball,” Zero Dark Thirty,” “Django Unchained,” “Captain Phillips,” and “American Hustle” in the span of three years. Not to put more pressure on it than it already has, but all eyes are on you now, “Anaconda” reboot.