Before you get enraged and unleash a plethora of tweets on the Academy’s new diversity rules upon the world, here’s an idea – actually read the criteria first.

The new rules are a low bar to clear. I’ve made four short films with tiny, mostly male crews and every single one of them would qualify for Best Picture if they were feature-length under these new rules. This is not the Academy forcing movies with white male casts out of the Oscars. This is not the Academy going ‘woke’ or ‘SJW’ or whatever stupid anti-diversity buzz word you want to use.

Potentially, the only diversity you’d need to qualify for Best Picture is a female VFX supervisor and a few Asian interns at your production company. It’s that easy. Like I said, the new rules are an incredibly low bar to clear. Let me put this in perspective for you: Green Book (of all things) would easily qualify under these new rules.

Even if these rules were stricter, who cares? We’ve had over ninety years of very non-diverse Best Picture winners. These winners not being diverse doesn’t make them bad (many of them are masterpieces), but it’s resulted in a lack of nominations for more different and unique films from different places, different perspectives. If the Academy voters need to be forced to watch diverse movies, then that’s what it takes. But, as I’ve said, that isn’t the case here. My prediction that the Oscars will be pretty much business as usual, especially since these rules don’t kick in until 2024. In conclusion, calm the hell down.