Despite its culpability in a high-profile gaffe at this year’s Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will continue working with accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, officials told members.
Among other duties, the firm is responsible for organizing results and monitoring the distribution of awards at the Oscars. It took responsibility for a flub that led presenters to name “La La Land” as the winner of this year’s Best Picture award instead of the actual winner, “Moonlight.”
In a letter sent to members Wednesday and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said the organization has been "unsparing in our assessment that the mistake made by representatives of the firm was unacceptable."
“Throughout the last month, the academy team has worked hand in hand with PwC to review our wide-ranging relationship – everything from Oscars voting, auditing, and taxes – during which we asked them to lay out for us a path and a process (toward) ensuring that everything will continue to the high standards the academy expects and you deserve,” she wrote. “After a thorough review, including an extensive presentation of revised protocols and ambitious controls, the board has decided to continue working with PwC.”
Boone Isaacs said a number of new protocols were also agreed to Tuesday during a meeting of the academy’s Board of Governors.
Among other things, PwC agreed to add a third “allotting leader” who will sit in the control room with the show’s director during the ceremony and make sure the correct names are read for the correct awards.
The mistake at this year’s Oscars came after a PwC partner accidentally gave presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the back-up envelope for the Actress in a Leading Role award.
The accounting firm apologized for the mix-up.
