Oscars shocker: 'La La Land' announced as Best Picture, but 'Moonlight' wins

Steve Harvey just took a very deep breath.

Warren Beatty, presenting Best Picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, took a long beat after opening the envelope -- then co-presenter Faye Dunaway named La La Land as the night's top honoree. Moments later, producer Jordan Horowitz, with the film's cast and crew in tow, took the stage to give his acceptance speech.

"There's a lot of love in this room," Horowitz said. "And let's use it to create and champion bold and diverse work ... toward empathy."

It was the outcome everyone had been expecting for weeks. Until it was exactly the opposite:

As his colleagues began taking their turns at the mic, Horowitz returned to say: "There's a mistake. Moonlight. You guys won Best Picture."

As confusion set in, Horowitz made it clear that he was not kidding. "This is not a joke," he said, about as gracefully as a person in that situation possibly could. "Moonlight has won Best Picture." Then he held the card aloft: "Moonlight. Best Picture."

Contained pandemonium briefly ensued, as the Moonlight crew took the stage and La La Land's cleared out.

"This is very unfortunate, personally I blame Steve Harvey for this," Kimmel said. "Warren, what did you do?!"

And then Beatty came back to the podium to explain.

"I want to tell you what happened," Beatty said. "I opened the envelope, and it said 'Emma Stone, La La Land.' That's why I took such a long look at Fey (Dunaway), and at you. I wasn't trying to be funny. ... This is Moonlight, the Best Picture."

Moonlight director Barry Jenkins got it together quickly for his own, very, very surprised acceptance speech to end the telecast:

"Very clearly, even in my dreams this could not be true," Jenkins said. "But the hell with dreams, this is true ... it is true, it's not fake ... my love to La La Land."

For her part, Stone was having none of Beatty's excuse. Talking with reporters backstage, she poured her heart out with love for eventual winner Moonlight, and then let loose a bit of a bombshell.

"I fucking love Moonlight" she said. "God I love Moonlight so much. Of course it was an exciting thing to hear 'La La Land' ... but I gotta tell you. I was holding my Best Actress card the whole time. Whatever story was told ... I wanted to talk to you guys [the press] first"

So what precipitated this re-creation of Harvey's epic Miss Universe fail on a massive, globally watched scale?

That remained unclear on Sunday night, as the Academy offered no explanation. The organization's media wrangler shut down questions to Jenkins and others who were asked about what happened.

But one thing was abundantly clear: Moonlight won Best Picture, and La La Land lost about as graciously as they could, given the circumstances.

"The folks from La La Land were so gracious," Jenkins said backstage. "We've spent a lot of time together over the last six months." Jenkins said he heard La La Land called out and was "not surprised," until he started to see a commotion onstage.

"I thought at that moment that something strange had occurred," Jenkins said, "That was awkward because I have never sen that happen before. It made a special feeling even more special, but not in a way I expected."

Mahershala Ali admitted that the mixup put the slightest, and surely temporary, damper on Moonlight's historic win:

"I didn't want to take something from somebody," he said. "It's very hard to feel joy in a moment like that. ... But I'm very fortunate to be celebrating the Best Picture win."