The most often considered issue of this year’s Oscar race is, “How will having ten nominees change the game?”
And the definitive answer is, “Ask me next April.”
Well, even that may be a little blurry.
What I can tell you is what has happened so far, which is still very much at the beginning of the journey as far as actual awards voters are concerned.
What we don’t see so far is an earnest effort by the “big movies” to get slots in the BP10… except for Up, which Disney has out there on parade early and often. All the sky-is-falling whining about Star Trek and The Hangover and Harry Potter as Best Picture contenders has been followed by Paramount and Warner Bros shrugging their campaigning shoulders and not spending a dime or more than a minute of effort moving the bar in that direction. Wisely.
Besides Up, on the commercial side, there is a Supporting Actress push going on for The Proposal, some hints that Sony is going to push District 9 out there, and The Weinsteins may find some real BPO traction for Inglourious Basterds. That means that there are two possible movies in the BP race from the Top 20 domestic grossers to date.
But quietly – amazingly quietly – Avatar is becoming a serious Best Picture player. Fox isn’t pushing it. They aren’t advertising it. They are doing what they have done for years… sell the movie and if awards come, so be it. And no matter the media response to the teaser trailer, you can feel the ground rumbling under the earth’s crust for this one now. The movie is going to be very, very big.
Even if it fails by some standards, it is almost impossible to imagine the film grossing less than $500 million worldwide. That would put it with Potter 6, Ice Age 3, and Trannies 2 (in that order… do people realize that IA3 has outgrossed Tr2 worldwide?) in that financial category. This is very rarified air for a title that is neither a sequel, animated or based on a literary work that defined the box office future of the title… you know, what grandpa used to call “an original.”
There are sixty-seven $500m worldwide grossers in history and only Ghost, The Day After Tomorrow, Forrest Gump, Armageddon, Night At The Museum, I Am Legend, Hancock, The Sixth Sense, Star Wars, ET, and Jurassic Park qualify in that rarified grouping. Five of the eleven were Best Picture nominated. Only one won. But still…
The two tip-top contenders that have not been seen – Nine and Invictus – remain on the top of many lists, though we are still weeks away from seeing the goods (or the bads).
But the lists have filled up with some titles that wouldn’t quite be borderline in years past, whether Precious or A Single Man or A Serious Man. A movie like The Hurt Locker would have a very hard road, no matter how good it is, because of its lackluster box office run. Inglourious Basterds would have been dismissed by now as too commercial and fun.
Still, all five films, seen as favorites by most to secure BP slots, are not advertising yet… not fighting to get out ahead of the late-coming big dogs… biding their time, perhaps waiting for critics to give them a lift.
The most heavily pushed “small” film so far, amongst actual voters and not just the press, is An Education… which is now benefiting from an air of inevitability. The film isn’t world beating. But the movie is loveable, the performances are loveable, and all of a sudden, borderline contenders like Alfred Molina are real contenders for nomination because Academy members are being asked early and often for their consideration.
The question at the end of the day will be, “What was the great idea that got these movies nominated?” And every year, we are reminded that there is no hard and fast rule. And this year, even more so.
I predict that as obvious as the floorplan seems to be this season, there will be a major surprise or two in which films didn’t get nominated… because so many are laying back, thinking they can foist themselves on the voters late in the game. There are too many studios trying to play this game and someone’s going to go home with their balloon crushed (and it isn’t like to be Disney).
On the other hand, it seems to me that we are already down to fifteen or fewer serious contenders for nomination, even without having seen five of them. So that is the shading in which the contending marketers are operating. There will be some happy surprises as well.
As risky as I see a strategy like The Hurt Locker’s as being, I am also quite conscious that the film will certainly be amongst the best five, by most standards of quality, in that group of fifteen. So no matter how little is spent or how late it is spent, aren’t they likely to be in the group of nominees? Isn’t there a constituency that will just joke on quality and feel that a nomination vote spent there is not a wasted vote?
The most interesting thing so far is that it is already November and so little has really happened. Toronto came and went… NYFF after that… and very little has changed. Most of the horses are in the gate, kicking and squealing, but not allowed to really race. They are just biding their time, waiting for the industry to put together enough money to pay for the dirt to be laid out on the track, lest the horses run on concrete and break their dainty legs.
And when they are let loose, it will surely seem more intense than ever. But it may actually be just the opposite… no time for much to happen but for people to see the movies and to vote their hearts and not their heads.
Come February, there is no way of knowing how distributors will behave either. Will, like last year, one or two films become the obvious frontrunners and send everyone else into “it’s lovely to be nominated” mode or will there be a battle royale amongst ten contenders who all feel viable as every one of them has fatal flaws and winning strengths?
Ask me in April.
– David Poland
October 30, 2009