More than a watch: How Rolex became one of cinema’s most enduring patrons

As the 98th Academy Awards takes place on Mar 15, the Swiss watchmaker’s fingerprints are all over Hollywood – and have been for longer than most people realise.

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On Mar 15 (it airs in Singapore on the morning of Mar 16), as the cameras pan across the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and the world tunes in across more than 200 countries, one name will be present at nearly every stage of the Oscars: Rolex. Not only on a wrist, but woven into the architecture of the evening – from the greenroom where nominees compose themselves before stepping onstage, to the museum that safeguards cinema’s legacy a few blocks away. It is a relationship decades in the making, and the result of a very deliberate strategy.

The argument Rolex is making, across all of it, is straightforward: that excellence in watchmaking and excellence in filmmaking are expressions of the same values – precision, longevity, the transmission of craft across generations. Whether or not one fully buys the analogy, the brand has embedded itself so deeply in cinema’s major institutions that it has become structurally difficult to think about the industry without it.

That is, of course, exactly the point. Cultural patronage at this scale is not philanthropy – it is brand-building of a particular, patient kind. By investing in the infrastructure of cinema rather than simply buying airtime around it, Rolex earns associations that no campaign could manufacture: with legacy, with artistic credibility, with the idea that some things are worth protecting for their own sake. For a watchmaker whose products are sold as heirlooms, the alignment is close to perfect.

The connection between Rolex and film stretches back to 1951, when the brand co-produced an animated short, The Story of Time, that earned an Academy Award nomination. Its watches began appearing on screen not long after – the Submariner in The Silent Enemy in 1958, then across the first nine James Bond films from 1962 onwards. These were costume decisions, not paid placements: the watch carried a certain weight of character that filmmakers wanted on screen. From 2004, Rolex ran a formal mentorship programme for two decades, pairing emerging filmmakers with directors including Alfonso Cuaron, Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Martin Scorsese, Zhang Yimou and Alejandro G Inarritu.

Since 2017, Rolex has been the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ exclusive watch partner and Proud Sponsor of the Oscars, becoming Exclusive Sponsor of the Governors Awards the following year. It is a Founding Supporter and Official Watch of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opened in Los Angeles in 2021, and this year adds its backing to Academy100, tied to the 100th Oscars ceremony in 2028.

THE TESTIMONEES

Rolex’s five cinema Testimonees span the full arc of the industry. James Cameron (since 2012) and Martin Scorsese (since 2017) anchor the established canon; Jia Zhang-Ke (since 2024), who won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2006 and founded the Pingyao International Film Festival, brings a perspective that extends the brand's reach well beyond Hollywood. Leonardo DiCaprio and Zendaya, both appointed in 2025, extend the range further – one a climate advocate with two decades of global influence, the other a generational figure who, as Time noted when naming her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, is drawing new audiences toward cinema.

THE GREENROOM

This year’s Oscars Greenroom, which Rolex has hosted since 2016, marks the centenary of the Oyster – the world’s first waterproof watch, launched in 1926. The design of the space runs in green velvet and champagne gold, with portraits of Oscars history on the walls. On display is the Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona in 18-carat yellow gold with a green dial, first introduced in 1963. The room is both a brand moment and a considered piece of production design – a single space that concentrates Rolex’s visual identity on one of the most-watched nights in film.

PRESERVING WHAT MATTERS

The less visible work may be the most consequential. Rolex's support for The Film Foundation – founded by Scorsese in 1990 – has contributed to the restoration of over 1,000 films. Its partnership with the UK’ National Film and Television School, formalised in 2024, funds a Masterclass series that has brought Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in front of the next generation of filmmakers. Its backing of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, from 2025, reaches independent voices at the earliest stage of their careers. In New York, its support for Film at Lincoln Center’s annual New York Film Festival sustains one of the world’s most respected cinematic platforms, running since 1963.

Rolex has built a position in cinema that operates simultaneously at the level of spectacle – the Oscars stage, the Greenroom, the Daytona in yellow gold – and at the level of infrastructure, where the work of keeping an art form alive actually happens. Credibility in culture is not bought in a single transaction. It is accumulated, carefully, over a very long time. Rolex, more than almost any other luxury brand, appears to understand this.

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