The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday that Glenn Close, Ridley Scott, and animator Floyd Norman will receive Honorary Academy Awards at the 17th Governors Awards this November, with producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films taking home the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award — a ceremony that finally resolves one of Hollywood’s longest-running injustices.
Close arrives as perhaps the most prominent example of Oscar futility in the modern era, an 0-for-8 record that spans nominations for The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs, The Wife, and Hillbilly Elegy. Scott, with four directing and producing nominations across Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and The Martian, has compiled a similarly distinguished record of near-misses.
Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor described Close’s “unparalleled emotional range” and called Scott “a true visionary whose decades-long legacy has left an immeasurable impact on global cinema and culture.”
Norman’s inclusion carries particular historical weight. He became the first African American animator at Walt Disney Studios in 1956, working directly with Walt Disney himself at a time when he had been told as a child that the studio did not hire Black artists. His career eventually stretched from Sleeping Beauty through Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc. at Pixar, bridging seven decades and two distinct eras of animation.
Vachon and Koffler founded Killer Films in New York in 1995 and have since built one of independent cinema’s most formidable track records, producing Boys Don’t Cry, Still Alice, Carol, First Reformed, A Different Man, and Past Lives, the last of which earned them their first Best Picture nomination.
Scott’s next film, The Dog Stars, is set for release in August 2026. The ceremony will be held November 15 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood, in partnership with Rolex.
