‘Spotlight’ Wins Best Picture at the Oscars

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Updated on July 6, 2023

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Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s drama on the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis, won Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, February 28, 2016.

The journalism drama triumphed against The Revenant and the financial comedy The Big Short to win the award. The fact-based narrative has received a number of other significant prizes since its premiere at last year’s Venice film festival, including the Screen Actors Guild’s outstanding cast award.

It was nominated for six Oscars and was the big winner at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. The drama produced by Tom McCarthy and distributed by Open Road about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team’s exposures of widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the following cover-ups was named one of AFI’s top ten films of 2015.

“This film gave a voice to survivors, and this award amplifies that voice. Pope Francis, it’s time to protect the children and restore the faith,” Michael Sugar stated as he accepted the award on behalf of producers Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin, Blye Pagon Faust and himself.

Executive producers are Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King of Participant Media, as well as Michael Bederman, Tom Ortenberg and Peter Lawson of Open Road Films, and Patrice Theroux and Harold van Lier of Entertainment One. David Mizner is an associate producer and Kate Churchill is a co-producer.

McCarthy, actor Mark Ruffalo, and co-writer Josh Singer were among the demonstrators outside L.A.’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels before tonight’s event. Ruffalo tweeted on Sunday, “Standing with the survivors of priest sexual abuse,” in support of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, which is calling for the identities of pedophile church members to be made public.

Spotlight thus becomes an unique best-picture winner, having won only one other Oscar tonight, for McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer’s best-original-screenplay. The Revenant, The Big Short, and Spotlight all looked to be front-runners for the major prize at various stages during the season, but a best-picture win seemed far less assured, given the exceptionally tight competition throughout the season. The three major award-giving guilds—producers, directors, and screen actors—all chose different films, signaling widespread support this year and the significant possibility of a best-picture upset. The news of a last-minute best-picture campaign for Room, the intimate drama for which Brie Larson won the best-actress award tonight, only adds to the feeling that the top prize was up for grabs until the very last moment.