And the award for the biggest Oscars-night blunder goes to...
After the very public mistake that saw the wrong film being named best picture at the Oscars, Lucy Mapstone looks at the night’s biggest talking point – and how it might have happened
The spotlight has been shone on those responsible for the counting and handing out of the winners at the Oscars following the spectacular blunder that saw the wrong film announced as the best picture victor.
Accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has apologised for the error, which saw presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announce La La Land as the winner instead of Moonlight, before they were stopped by PwC’s Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz.
The company has said they are “investigating” the mix-up, which will go down in Oscars history as one of the prize-giving ceremony’s biggest mistakes ever.
Here’s what you need to know about the Oscars winner votes and how the error may have occurred.
What is PwC? PwC is the accountancy firm in charge of counting the 7,000 votes made by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who vote via post or electronically, to collate the full list of winners for the Oscars.
Who are Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz? Cullinan and Ruiz are partners at the US branch of PwC.
They are responsible for manually counting the ballots for the 24 Oscars categories and collating the winners.
They are then tasked with transporting the winners cards to the awards ceremony to hand out to presenters ahead of each prize-giving.
How do they count the winners? In the days leading up to the awards, Cullinan and Ruiz - with the help of a few colleagues - collect the 7,000 votes and count them manually.
Ruiz previously told the BBC: “Once polls close, we print everything and go through a very manual process.
“We do that for a variety of reasons. We want to make sure that no results reside in any one system or computer, and want to ensure a variety of different mechanisms (are used) to secure the process and the results.”
Who is aware of the Oscar winners before they are announced? Only Cullinan and Ruiz know the full list of winners prior to the ceremony.
During the counting process, those helping them only see a “small fraction” of the paper printed out by Cullinan and Ruiz so as not to reveal the full list to anybody else.
Ruiz said: “It’s up to Brian and I to fully count everything together once, twice and sometimes multiple times to make sure it’s correct.”
What happens with the winners cards? Two duplicate sets of winners cards in envelopes are produced and put into matching briefcases, which are carried to the red carpet and into the Dolby Theatre ahead of the ceremony.
Why are there duplicate sets of winners cards? Two identical sets are made for safety purposes, in case one of the sets is compromised or stolen on the way to the ceremony.
Cullinan and Ruiz arrive separately and take different routes while flanked by security at all times to ensure they make it safely to the event.