The studio that won the most Academy Awards for Best Picture
Walt Disney may have more Oscar wins than anyonebut House of Mouse itself was far less fortunate in the Best Picture category. Again, if we exclude Searchlight Pictures and 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox), Walt Disney Studios has collected 13 Best Picture Oscars, but no wins between films released through Walt Disney Pictures (four nods), Touchstone Pictures (six nods), Hollywood Pictures (two nods) and Marvel Studios (one nod). Fortunately, the Oscar count gets a little less confusing when it comes to the rest of Hollywood’s Big Five: Universal and Warner Bros. have won Best Picture nine times (the same as MGM), 20th Century Studios has 10 wins, and Paramount is sitting pretty with 11 wins.
Thus, Columbia Pictures remains the reigning champion with 12 Academy Awards for Best Picture. As funny as it is to realize that the record is owned by the same studio that released Madame Web, Harold and the Purple Crayon and Kraven the Hunter in 10 months in 2024 (low blow, I know, but it’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 Quay, The Bridge over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Time and Oliver! from 1950 to 1969 alone, the studio added seven Best Picture Oscars. Only after that did Columbia slow down; the next win was 11 years later (1980’s Kramer vs. Kramer), followed by Gandhi, miraculously beating The Alienist for Best Picture in 1983. (which even its director Richard Attenborough thought was silly), and, most recently, The Last Emperor, which was awarded the same award in 1988.
Will Colombia find a way to defend their title for the foreseeable future? It is not impossible. Lest we forget, in the early 2010s the studio was still a Best Picture Oscar nomination magnet, having produced The Social Network, Moneyball, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, Captain Phillips” and “American Hustle”. for three years, so as not to put too much pressure on it, but now all eyes are on you, the Anaconda reboot.