Plenty of stars like Kevin Smith, Mandy Moore and more had their homes impacted by the L.A. wildfires that occurred from January 7th to the 31st. 57,000 acres of land were burned, with the biggest fires occurring in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. Oscar winners were affected by the wildfires too, like production designer Rick Carter. After his Oscar statuettes were destroyed in the California wildfires, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went out of its way to help the Avatar and Lincoln art director.
Rick Carter has a masterful craft for creating cinematic worlds, collaborating with visionary directors like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. He’s also a 2010 Oscar winner for Best Production Design for Avatar (which is available on your Disney+ subscription), and then won the same Oscar category three years later for Lincoln (which is streaming with your Hulu subscription). Here's what the Academy posted on Instagram about helping Carter out:
The American production designer looked so proud and happy to have his new Oscar statuettes. Clearly the Academy couldn’t let it slide that a talented, visionary art director like Rick Carter lost his statuettes in the widespread fires. After all, an Oscar is a physical symbol of the hard work and creative genius that an artist puts into their cinematic projects. With these new statuettes, the Academy thoughtfully helped put out one fire in Rick Carter’s life.
The fires took a lot of lives, homes and valuable possessions, but if you can find good people in your life who are there to help you recover what’s been lost, that can make anyone incredibly fortunate. That’s all the more reason why celebrities like Chris Pratt, Mark Hamill and others spoke of the firefighters who brought their service to putting out the wildfires and thanked them for their courageous service.
The California wildfires postponed a lot of things, like the Critics' Choice Awards, Oscar nominations and the live announcement of the Screen Actors Guild nominations was cancelled. Well-known figures like Stephen King felt like this year’s Oscar ceremony should have been cancelled because of the fires.
However, the ceremony went on ahead, with one of the 2025 Oscar speeches involving Conan O’Brien having team members of the Los Angeles Fire Department take the stage and thank them for their service. It’s clear the Academy has a deep understanding of the devastation the wildfires inflicted on California and used its platform to acknowledge the bravery of first responders.
The Avatar and Lincoln art director’s original Oscars may have been taken away by the California wildfires, but the Academy saved the day, replacing the destroyed statuettes with new ones. While the fires away took so much, they’ll never destroy the legacy of an artist who’s responsible for shaping the most iconic cinematic worlds.
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