Stuntmen-turned-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski are celebrating the stunt community finally being recognised at the Oscars.

The Fall Guy filmmaker and John Wick director have called for the Oscars to honour stunt performers for many years, and on Thursday, the Academy announced that they had created the new category, Achievement in Stunt Design.

The inaugural prize will be handed out at the 100th Academy Awards in 2028, which honours films released in 2027.

Leitch shared the announcement on Instagram and wrote, “This has been a journey for so many of us! (Stunt designer Chris O’Hara) and myself have invested several years into this. We built on the work of all the stunt designers who fought so hard for this in the past over the past decades. We are very grateful. Thank You @theacademy.”

In an interview with Deadline, Stahelski praised Academy officials “for really putting in the time” to figure out how best to honour the stunt community and for involving himself, Leitch and fellow stuntman-turned-director Sam Hargrave, among others, in the process.

“We’re very lucky to be at the tail end of this, or at the apex where, a couple of years ago, the Academy came to us going, ‘Hey, how do we help? How do we get this going?'” he explained. “And for some people, it may have looked like it’s taken a long time, but actually, I give a lot of credit to the Academy for doing it right.

“Every different aspect of the stunt community, they went and talked to and tried to find out, not just should we get an award – no one argued that – they wanted to know how to give the award, who to give it to, how do we select it and they really did their homework. And when they felt like they had a good handle on it, they announced it.”

He added that the Stunt Design category is “the best case” scenario for the community because stunts are “very collaborative”.

Actors Nicholas Hoult and Jurnee Smollett celebrated the news underneath Leitch’s Instagram post, while The Fall Guy star Hannah Waddingham wrote that she was “beyond thrilled” that stunt teams were finally getting recognised.

Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027.

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