This year’s Academy Awards, as is tradition, featured a segment dedicated to actors, directors, screenwriters, film industry executives and luminaries who had died since the previous year’s ceremony. And the omission of David Keighley, who died last year, has led to his son, Geoff Keighley, publicly calling out the Oscars online.
On Sunday, the 98th Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles. As has been the case for decades now, the Oscars featured an “In Memoriam” segment dedicated to filmmakers, crew members, and actors who passed away over the previous year. And Game Awards creator and host Geoff Keighley was “disappointed” that this year’s segment didn’t include his father, who has been working on IMAX movies since the 1970s.
So incredibly disappointed and heartbroken that the #Oscars and AMPAS chose not to include my father, David Keighley, and his immeasurable contributions to IMAX and cinema in the In Memoriam segment in the broadcast.
I will never forget. pic.twitter.com/bMmICAPn3w
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) March 16, 2026
In the 15 years before his death in September 2025, David held the role of IMAX’s first Chief Quality Officer and personally oversaw every IMAX film print for decades before that. Multiple Hollywood directors, including James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, and Ryan Coogler, shared statements praising David’s work upon his passing, with Coogler saying, “Anyone who’s ever had their mind blown by the images in an IMAX theatrical presentation has David to thank for it.” Yet despite his contributions to film, David Keighley was not featured in the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” segment.
“So incredibly disappointed and heartbroken that the #Oscars and AMPAS chose not to include my father, David Keighley, and his immeasurable contributions to IMAX and cinema in the In Memoriam segment in the broadcast,” posted Geoff Keighley shortly after the awards aired on March 15. “I will never forget.”
On March 16, Keighley offered an update on the situation, claiming he had been blocked on social media after publicly complaining.
“The Oscars’ response? AMPAS/Oscar CEO Bill Kramer apparently blocked me on Instagram last night after seeing my post expressing disappointment about the broadcast’s In Memoriam omission of my father,” posted Geoff on Twitter. “You truly can’t make this stuff up.”
Geoff and his father’s history with the Oscars
In the comments below both his initial post and his update, many fans and creators shared gifs and clips of arguably the most famous Game Awards moment in the show’s decade-long history: That time Split Fiction and It Takes Two director Josef Fares shouted “Fuck the Oscars!” on the live broadcast during the 2017 Game Awards.
In a 2022 interview with The Ringer, Geoff talked about growing up around movies and award shows and how that helped shape his desires for games to have their own big event, leading to the creation of the Spike Video Game Awards and later the Game Awards.
“My dad would always talk about the Oscars and how much it meant to him,” he told The Ringer. “I always wondered, ’Well, why don’t games have something that people care about that much? What’s the Oscar equivalent for gaming?’”