Star Wars: The Force Awakens Among Eligible Scores for 2015 Oscars

For film industry watchers, the question of whether Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be award-eligible for 2015 has been on many minds. Several guilds had deadlines of nearly a week ago - that meant, thanks to no screenings of the film until this week, it would not be able to be nominated this year. Indeed, some of those awards, like the Screen Actors Guild, have had their nominations come and go, and no Star Wars in sight.

Well, one ComicBook.com source told us the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually postponed their nominations to include Star Wars, and it looks now like that is true. They announced the 112 film scores eligible for nominations, and the December 18, 2015 release everyone's been worried about, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, is on the list.

Oh, so is Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This would seem to indicate that The Force Awakens can be included in every category for the Academy Awards. It would be odd to see a film nominated in one category and not allowed to be in others, after all. This must also be considered bad news for the rest of the talented composers, because when John Williams is around, it certainly makes competition stiffer.

For those awards that The Force Awakens was not eligible for this year, it would be set for next year's nominations. If Disney chooses to screen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story early enough next year, they could be in a strange position with two Star Wars movies able to be nominated in one awards cycle, something that has literally never happened before. After all, we have three new Star Wars films in the next 18 months. What a time to be alive.

The 88th Academy Awards nominations will be officially announced on January 14, 2016.