'Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor': Oscar academy appears to let slip award predictions in Twitter faux pas

The Academy mistakenly shared the results of a new interactive tool, which allows users to forecast this year's winners

Joaquin Phoenix was touted as the Best Actor winner for the 2020 Oscars in a tweet mistakenly posted by the Academy. Getty Images

For a brief moment, it appeared the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had made an even bigger blunder than the year La La Land was incorrectly announced as the winner of Best Picture.

(That honour had actually gone to Moonlight, a mistake quickly corrected in an awkward on-stage handover).

In a post published on the organisation's official Twitter page on Monday, the Academy appeared to have lifted the lid on the winners of this year's Academy Awards, ahead of the ceremony on Sunday, February 9.

In a graphic headlined "My Oscars Predictions", the post forecast that Joker actor Joaquin Phoenix would take home the Best Actor trophy, while Renee Zellweger would win the Best Actress gong for her role as Judy Garland in Judy.

The post also speculated that 1917's Sam Mendes would score Best Director, South Korean drama Parasite would be awarded Best Picture and the prizes for Best Supporting Actor and Actress would go to Brad Pitt and Laura Dern respectively.

After fans quickly took to social media to question if it was ethical for the Academy to predict the winners of its own event, or if it had erroneously revealed the victors almost a week early, the organisation swiftly deleted the post.

Instead, the Academy revealed that the post was a glitch, stemming from its interactive feature that allows users to share their own guesses for Sunday's ceremony.

"We invited fans on Twitter to make and share your Oscars predictions. A tonne of you already have!" the Academy wrote in a follow-up tweet. "A brief issue on Twitter made some of yours look like they came from our account. They didn’t. This error is now resolved. And we’ll reveal our picks on Sunday."

The Academy's prediction post, however, erroneous, did correspond with some likely choices, with Phoenix and Zellweger taking home acting gongs at the Golden Globes and Baftas.

Voting for this year's Oscars drew to a close yesterday, ahead of Sunday's ceremony. The Academy's Twitter gaffe came three years after Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner of Best Picture, after being given the incorrect envelope to open.