The time the Best Picture Oscar accidentally went to Fast and Furious 7

Tension in the Dolby Theatre was high. 2016 had been an outstanding year for movies but the Best Picture Oscar had become a straight race between La La Land and Moonlight.

Best Director had just gone to Damien Chazelle for La La Land so that smart money was on the hugely popular musical to win Best Picture.

“And the best picture Oscar goes to…” says Warren Beatty with a flourish. The room falls silent. He opens the envelope. A pause. He looks nervously towards host Jimmy Kimmel. Another pause as he shows the card to his presenting partner Faye Dunnaway, before she takes to the microphone and reads out the fateful words…

“Fast and Furious 7”

“Man, there was uproar,” laughs Beatty.

“I mean, Fast and Furious 7? It was a great movie, but I don’t think that anyone expected it to win Best Picture.”

The Fast and Furious crew made their way to the stage, clearly delighted. The Rock can clearly be seen mouthing ‘About f**king time’ to Michelle Rodriguez. Jason Statham lets out a roar of animalistic delight.

Backstage, there was pandemonium.

“Okay, we’re used to shocks at the Oscars. I mean, Shakespeare in Love, right?” Explained an Academy insider.

“But this was off the scale. I mean, it hadn’t even been nominated.”

Vin Diesel was nineteen minutes into a speech about family when it became clear there’d been a terrible mistake.

“As far as we can tell, Warren had been distracted by a sexy lady and hadn’t noticed that the Academy official had given him a joke Oscars envelope instead of the real one,” continued the insider

The Rock then interrupted his co-star with the now infamous words – ‘There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture. This is not a joke. Moonlight has won best picture.’

As the Moonlight team made their way to the stage. The Fast and Furious team found it difficult to hide their emotions. Vin Diesel burst into tears and Jason Statham punched Jimmy Kimmel in the face.

“Yeah, that was a difficult moment,” said The Rock, sadly.

“But you’ve got to be philosophical. I mean, yeah, Moonlight won on the night. But Fast and Furious 7 has a shot where a bunch of cars parachute out of a plane, so doesn’t that make us the real Best Picture?”

The answer, of course, is no. It was Moonlight.