Judd Apatow: Oscars should have a comedy category

The Oscars should feature a comedy category, according to Judd Apatow, the director of Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Apatow took to Twitter to ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider including a separate category for comedic films, similar to the one introduced in 2001 for animated movies.

"Since comedies are rarely up for Oscars it does make sense to have a comedy category," he tweeted. "It's been like five times in a zillion years that [a comedy has] won best picture."

Apart from animated movies, only six comedy films have received a nomination in the best film category at the Oscars in the past decade. Voters tend to plump for dramatic fare in the acting categories and action adventure, science fiction or fantasy in the technical categories, leaving comedy without much of a look in.

Film-makers working in the field often stand a better chance of coming home with a gong at the rival Golden Globes ceremony, staged by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which splits many of its awards into comedy/musical and drama sections. By way of example, last year The King's Speech's Colin Firth won the award for best performance in a drama, while Paul Giamatti won the equivalent comedy/musical award for Barney's Version.

The last romantic comedy to win the best film award at the Oscars was Shakespeare in Love in 1999. Comedy-dramas Driving Miss Daisy and Forrest Gump were winners in 1989 and 1994 respectively.