Welcome back to a brand new year. And get ready for a lot of desperate searching for answers in an Oscar season unlike any we have yet experienced.
Of The (Still) Likely Six…
The Likely 6
Barbie - Greta Gerwig(Warner Bros)
The Holdovers -Alexander Payne(Focus Features)
Killers of the Flower Moon - Martin Scorsese(Apple/Paramount)
Maestro - Bradley Cooper (Netflix)
Oppenheimer - Christopher Nolan (Universal)
Poor Things - Yorgos Lanthimos (Searchlight)
… only Poor Things is not yet available on an SVOD or individual-buy VOD. Barbie is on MAX, The Holdovers is on Peacock, Maestro is on Netflix, Oppenheimer is available to rent ($5.99) or purchase ($19.99) across the web, as is Killers of the Flower Moon, renting for $19.99 or available for purchase for $24.99.
You will notice, looking at Monday’s box office reporting via BOMojo (I included every film that is seriously trying to contend), that 4 of the 5 box-office-reporting titles from my Likely 6 are still in theaters… at least some theaters. Oppenheimer is in a token number of theaters (25) after more than 5 months since opening, but an IMAX re-expansion is expected this month. Barbie is the only one not in any theaters. Poor Things, only in theaters, is taking the classic posture of waiting on Oscar noms for a wider expansion.
Also holding its water for nomination day (January 23) is American Fiction, looking closer and closer to being in the “Likely” group. Open wide now are The Color Purple, The Iron Claw, and Ferrari.
Apple’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon have had unexpected, but interesting journeys in theatrical. As you know, Killers was released with Paramount and Napoleon with Sony. Both did 5 weeks on over 1000 screens and both dropped under that count in their 6th week. Killers was still over $1400 a screen per weekend when it ramped down. Napoleon was under $1000 per. It will be interesting to see if this is a map for an ongoing theatrical strategy from Apple. Next up, Argylle.
I have been writing for years now that the first move The Academy needs to make to improve television ratings is bring the Oscar show into late January/early February, depending on Super Bowl dates. It’s 2024 and waiting 70 days to honor movies released the year before this is INSANE. Americans could barely maintain focus on Ukraine and Israel/Palestine for 70 days. And the long wait is ironic, as the entire industry has shortened windows instead of expanded them. Again, The Holdovers was released, expanded to its widest release on its 27th day and went onto Peacock in less than 70 days.
The Big Idea of shorter windows, going back to the DVD wave in the early 2000s, was to avoid having to re-market the movies at great expense… big spend on theatrical and then 6 months to DVD, spending almost as much as the theatrical release to remind everyone that they need to buy that DVD. Obviously, that has changed dramatically in the last decade or so, with the spend to release a movie getting even bigger, as studios continue to push to front-load the box office.
But isn’t waiting 70 days into the new year of movies to celebrate the last year of movies just screaming, “how do we sell the excitement of these films to you again?” The hope a lot of people have this season is that the BarbieHeimer phenomenon will extend to the Oscar show, 8 months after its explosive moment. And maybe it will. And maybe it won’t. But you can’t count on that every year.
I am also struck by this…
I can kind of understand why the voting doesn’t start until January 11… but really, it doesn’t give voters another weekend to watch movies, so why Thursday and not Tuesday? And why not announce the nominations on the Thursday of the same week? The entire system has been made electronic. What is the point of having instant voting results if you hold onto them for a week?
Let’s be realistic about how this affects distributors who is looking to use Oscar nominations to propel their movies further. It costs them money. And it withholds the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday from being a part of their revenue strategy! What the hell is The Academy waiting for? It’s not like the current nominations announcement schedule isn’t 46 days before the Oscar show! Even if you don’t shorten that, the notion that noms being 7 weeks before the show and 6 weeks before the show means NOTHING… except to penalize theatrical releases for a week, revving their engines in anticipation.
The Academy remains stuck between the past and the future. The organization will not make a more firm commitment to theatrical movies, even though the rules still demand certain theatrical conditions. It will not make the move to keep Oscar more relevant to a wider audience by shortening the window from the end of the year to the show itself. The Academy brand is about tradition and authority, but it is, an an organization, afraid to flex its muscles as the powerful brand it is.
But I digress…
Do we really know anything much more about how voters feel about the movies after the holiday than before?
Not so much.
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