Middle-earth in film also became the most-nominated in the Academy's history, surpassing the "Godfather" series' 28 (with the release of "The Hobbit", the series currently has 36 nominations total). Its 11 Oscars at the 2004 Academy Awards tied it for most awards won for one film with "Titanic" six years earlier and the 1959 version of "Ben-Hur." It also broke the previous "sweep" record, beating "Gigi" and "The Last Emperor" (which each took 9 out of 9). "The Return of the King" also made movie history as the highest-grossing film opening on a Wednesday and was the second film after "Titanic" to earn
The Salesman (2016 film) Jeremy Zimmer, announced that UTA's annual Oscars party was cancelled and a protest rally would be held instead. On 24 February, Farhadi announced that Anousheh Ansari, known as the first female space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, a former director of Solar System Exploration at NASA – would represent him at the Oscars ceremony. The night of the Oscar ceremony, 26 February, as the film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Anousheh Ansari took to the stage to read from a prepared statement Farhadi had written which said in part "My absence is out of respect for the people