He was warned not to tweet during the show.
The bonehead Oscars bean counter who was busy tweeting during Sunday’s big show — and ended up handing the wrong envelope to presenter Warren Beatty — asked beforehand if he could post to social media, sources said.
But Academy Awards bigs balked, warning the big-shot PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant, Brian Cullinan, that he had to stay offline to focus on his sole task that night— making sure each envelope got in the right hands, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Brian was asked not to tweet or use social media during the show,’’ a source said, according to People magazine Tuesday.
“He was fine to tweet before he arrived at the red carpet, but once he was under the auspices of the Oscar-night job, that was to be his only focus.’’
But the top tax accountant apparently didn’t heed the directive. He tweeted numerous times during the LA awards ceremony, including just three minutes before the debacle, the Journal said.
His last tweet was a photo of Best Actress winner Emma Stone.
Soon after, Cullinan, 57, handed Beatty a duplicate envelope for Best Actress — the award Stone had just won — instead of the correct one for Best Picture. That led to a series of missteps that ended with the wrong winner, “La La Land,” being announced as Best Picture, instead of the real winner, “Moonlight.”
“Tweeting right before the Best Picture category was announced was not something that should have happened,” the source told People.
Still, Cullinan “doesn’t believe that a tweet caused the error,’’ a PwC honcho told the Journal.
Either way, he feels “horrible, absolutely horrible,’’ said Tim Ryan, the US chairman of PwC.
The Academy is now reviewing its decades-long relationship with PwC because of the flub, People said.
The embattled accountant did not return messages for comment Tuesday.
The Academy also did not return requests for comment.