Get ready to make those Academy Awards betting pools a bit longer in 2010.

Wednesday afternoon, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis announced in a Beverly Hills news conference that next year's field of best picture nominees will double in size to 10 finalists, for the first time since 1943.

"After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year," Ganis said, according to Variety.com. "The final outcome, of course, will be the same -- one best picture winner -- but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009."

The last time the Oscars included 10 best picture finalists was 1943 when Casablanca won over a field including For Whom the Bell Tolls, Heaven Can Wait, In Which We Serve, Madame Curie, The Human Comedy, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Song of Bernadette and Watch on the Rhine..

The change is another sign that the academy is concerned about fading
ratings for its annual Oscars telecast, amid complaints that voters are
out of touch with mainstream movie tastes. The academy already
shifted 2010's presentation date to March 7, two weeks later than this
year, to avoid head-to-head competition for viewers with the Winter
Olympics.

Nobody can predict whether those extra slots will be filled by movies that the general public embraced at the box office, or five more esoteric films that mainstream audiences generally haven't seen.

Complaints from mainstream moviegoers resurfaced when the No. 2 grosser of all time, The Dark Knight ($533.3 million domestic), wasn't among 2008's best picture finalists, despite receiving some of the year's best reviews. WALL-E ($223.8 million) was pegged by many as a best picture finalist but missed the cut, settling for the best animated feature Oscar, which doesn't carry the posterity of a best picture Academy Award.

Among 2008's five best picture nominees, only Slumdog Millionaire sold more than $100 million in tickets, and much of that box office haul occurred after winning the Oscar. It's final domestic box office total of $141.3 million dwarfed the earnings of three other nominees combined (Milk, Frost/Nixon and The Reader).

Ratings for last February's telecast were 6 percent higher than 2008's broadcast -- Hugh Jackman hosting and Heath Ledger's posthumous win for best supporting actor in The Dark Knight obviously made a difference. But 2008's show was the lowest-rated Oscars telecast ever, so an uptick could be expected.

The Golden Globes, sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, annually nominates 10 movies for two best picture prizes, divided between dramas and musical/comedy.