The Wall Street Journal-20080123-Oscar Nods Offer Little Boon to Distributors- Uncertainty of Telecast Amid Writers Strike Chills the Usual Buzz
Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080123
Oscar Nods Offer Little Boon to Distributors; Uncertainty of Telecast Amid Writers Strike Chills the Usual Buzz
A crop of modestly budgeted movies attracted coveted Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, trumping the big-budget studio pictures that often prevail. But with the writers' strike threatening to disrupt -- or even cancel -- the annual awards telecast, the movies in contention for Hollywood's biggest accolade might have to work harder to get the commercial boost that typically comes with the nominations.
That is especially true since the annual Golden Globes telecast -- the kickoff to Oscar season, if not an actual predictor of Oscar winners -- was reduced to a dull press conference after the Writers Guild of America refused to allow its members to write a script for the show.
Indeed, while late-night talk shows have returned to the air and the morning news and variety shows provide venues for the studios to showcase their Oscar contenders, the guild has thus far refused to grant a waiver for its writers to work on the Oscar telecast. Should the strike, which began Nov. 5, continue up to the Feb. 24 Academy Awards, it is unclear what form the broadcast would take, or whether members of the Screen Actors Guild would cross any potential picket lines to attend the event.
The five Best Picture nominees are "Juno" from News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight; "No Country for Old Men" from Walt Disney Co.'s Miramax and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Vantage; "There Will be Blood," also from Miramax and Paramount Vantage; "Michael Clayton" from Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros.; and "Atonement" from General Electric Co.'s Focus Features.
Many small films that garner Academy Awards nominations hope for a bump at the box office based on those nominations. That may be especially true this year, as four of the five nominated pictures have failed to crack the $50 million mark in domestic ticket sales -- though the hyperviolent "No Country for Old Men" is hovering at about $49 million.
Of the five nominees, it's the quirky teen pregnancy tale "Juno" that leads the pack at the box office. Pushed by a clever marketing blitz from distributor Fox Searchlight, the movie starring Canadian actress Ellen Page (who was also nominated in the Best Actress category), has grossed more than $85 million at the U.S. box office in its seven-week run.
In the meantime, big-budget movies with big marketing campaigns that were pre-Oscar hopefuls have fared poorly in the annual horse race. The most notable omission was Universal Pictures' New York crime epic "American Gangster," starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Other than a supporting-actress nod to Ruby Dee and an art-direction nomination, the picture missed out. The same goes for Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" and Universal's "Charlie Wilson's War," which garnered only a handful of nominations in smaller categories.
The loss of some promotional opportunities due to the strike puts a higher premium on the old-fashioned Oscar campaigning tactic of pressing the flesh. Marion Cotillard, the star of the French musical "La Vie en Rose," for example, has been in Los Angeles for the past few weeks, making appearances and promoting the film. "Her nomination gets her a lot of television-interview interest so it's great to already have her in L.A.," says Bob Berney, president of Picturehouse, a specialty film unit of Time Warner, which is distributing the movie in the U.S.
Warner Bros. will try to get a boost for "Michael Clayton" by rereleasing it to theaters nationwide on Friday; the film originally came out last fall.
