( Note : A very kind and intelligent commenter at The Film Experience pointed out a flaw in what I had originally calculated - Best Picture nominees with multiple acting nominees in the same category were not being accounted for. All of the below has been adjusted to include those instances. The trend remains the same, though several details are slightly different.)

As a quick follow-up to the first post, here are two interesting charts that actually say a little bit more about the noticeable change in nominees in the last two years.

The first is the percentage of acting nominations, per category, that were for films also nominated for Best Picture. The trend is very noisy - there’s arguably no trend or conclusion to be drawn at all. But this year represents a fairly interesting outlier.

Before 2013, there were nearly no instances of an acting category fully overlapping with Best Picture nominees. It’s extremely important to note that this is considerably skewed by the fact that there can now be more than 5 Best Picture nominees (like the years prior to 1944), and due to that, it is significantly harder for 100% overlap in the years between (there would have to be perfect matchup - 5 to 5 or multiple nominees in the same category for the same film). And so, it is much more likely that it would happen prior to 1944 and after 2008. Even so, before 2013, there had been 8 instances.1 of 100% overlap in any acting category - fully 2.4% of the time.2 In 2013, it happened in 2 categories (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor).

The second chart shows the percentage of all acting nominees that were also in Best Picture nominees. Again, this is much more likely in years with more than 5 Best Picture nominees. But the fact remains - 80% of acting nominations in 2013 came from Best Picture nominees - second all-time (tied with 1939/1940, and behind 1943).

Is this necessarily bad? Harder to say. But it does go to support Mark Harris’ argument - that major nominations have absolutely overlapped with the Best Picture field in the last 2 years.

1 Best Actor - 1942, 1943, 1964, 1966; Best Actress - 1939, 1940, 1977; Best Supporting Actress - 1988. 2013 is the first time ever that it has happened for Best Supporting Actor.
2 8 out of 328 possible times - 328 being the number of distinct acting category pools (the 2013 Best Actress pool, for example, is 1 pool).