Glenn Close, Ridley Scott and Floyd Norman get honorary Oscars on November 15: a guide to their films

On Sunday, November 15, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hand Honorary Oscars to the actor Glenn Close, the animator Floyd Norman and the director Ridley Scott, and its Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to the producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. The Academy announced the honorees on June 10, after a vote by its Board of Governors, and said on June 29 that the 17th Governors Awards would take place at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood, produced for the first time by Jennifer Todd. The dinner itself is not the Oscars show, but the Academy says highlights from it are folded into that year’s broadcast, which for the 99th Oscars is on Sunday, March 14, 2027.

This guide sets out who is being honored, the films the Academy names in its announcement, and, where the studio’s own page confirms it, where some of those films stream today.

How the Governors Awards work

The Academy groups three awards under this name: the Honorary Award, the Thalberg award for producers and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Its rules allow up to four a year, with no more than one Thalberg and one Hersholt, and they cannot be given posthumously or to a sitting governor. Except in extraordinary circumstances, someone who has won a competitive Oscar cannot receive an Honorary Award. By our count, this year’s three Honorary Awards and one Thalberg reach the limit of four, and no Hersholt award is named. Honorary Oscars themselves go back to the first Academy Awards ceremony, in 1929, the Academy says.

Glenn Close

The Academy counts more than 100 film credits for Close over five decades and eight Oscar nominations, starting with her first feature, The World According to Garp. Its ceremony pages list her as a nominee in each of those years: for supporting roles in Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural (the 1983, 1984 and 1985 ceremonies), for lead roles in Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs and The Wife (1988, 1989, 2012 and 2019), and for a supporting role in Hillbilly Elegy (2021). The announcement also names Jagged Edge, Reversal of Fortune, Hamlet, Mars Attacks!, Air Force One, The Stepford Wives, The Girl with All the Gifts, Four Good Days and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

Her next film opens five days after the ceremony. Lionsgate lists Close in the cast of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, in theaters and IMAX from November 20; our Hunger Games guide covers the earlier films. Of the titles the Academy names, 101 Dalmatians, released on November 27, 1996, is streaming on Disney+, Disney’s own page shows.

Floyd Norman

Norman joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1956 as an animator and storyboard artist and became, the Academy says, the studio’s first Black animator, in a career it puts at 65 years. Sleeping Beauty was his first Disney feature. The Academy also credits him on The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, the shorts Donald in Mathmagic Land, Goliath II and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, and later on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.

Ridley Scott

Scott’s four nominations are for directing Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, at the 1992, 2001 and 2002 ceremonies, and for Best Picture as one of the producers of The Martian in 2016. The Academy’s pages list him as a nominee each time. Its announcement adds Alien, Blade Runner, Legend, Black Rain, G.I. Jane, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Prometheus, All the Money in the World, House of Gucci, The Last Duel and Napoleon, and notes that he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 2024.

In June the Academy called The Dog Stars his upcoming film. It has since been released: 20th Century Studios gives August 28, 2026, as the release date, and says it has been on sale digitally since October 27 and comes out on Blu-ray on December 1.

Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler

The two founded Killer Films in New York in 1995, and the Academy credits them together with Hedwig and the Angry Inch, One Hour Photo, Camp, The Company, The Notorious Bettie Page, May December and Materialists. The Academy also lists Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Happiness, Boys Don’t Cry, Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, Still Alice, Carol, First Reformed, Vox Lux, The World to Come, Zola and A Different Man among their Killer Films productions. Their Best Picture nomination came for Past Lives at the 96th Academy Awards in 2024.

The Thalberg goes to a creative producer whose films have kept up a consistently high standard, in the Academy’s definition, and it is not given every year. The Academy’s list of recipients shows Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli as the last, in 2024, and Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall before them, in 2018.