Within the past week, two end-of-the-year releases and potential Oscar contenders have been pushed to 2014. The Weinstein Company’s “Grace of Monaco” could have given Oscar winner Nicole Kidman a shot at another Best Actress statue. But the studio’s decision to delay the release, because they need more time to finish the film, takes her out of contention.
And that’s the same reason Sony Pictures Classics is giving for moving the Steve Carell drama, “Foxcatcher”, from its scheduled December 20 release date to sometime in 2014. From the buzz and the new, brief teaser trailer (which still says “Coming this December”) it seemed like Carell was being showcased as a legitimate Best Actor contender. This delay also means “Foxcatcher” has to forfeit its prime Nov. 8 premiere at the AFI Fest
And these may not be the last films to drop-out of this Awards Season competition: Paramount says that Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, is nowhere near ready for it’s November 15 release because Scorsese’s current cut of the film is “180 minutes”. The studio is strongly hinting that the film may not even be done in time for a Christmas Day open. This would be the second year in a row a DiCaprio Awards Season contender got pushed to the following year (“The Great Gatsby”).
With possibly all three of these films out of the picture, the race for the 2013 glory narrows significantly. “Saving Mr. Banks”, “Gravity”, “Nebraska”, “Captain Phillips”, “American Hustle”, “The Monuments Men” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” will certainly benefit. But there’s no guarantee that one of these won’t get bumped to 2014 as well.
You have to wonder if studios are moving their films because they actually do need more time to finish them OR because they’re scared of the competition and don’t think their films are good enough. It costs a lot of money to run an Awards Season marketing campaign. Execs. may be thinking that it’s smarter to drop-out of the race now than to blow hundreds of thousand of dollars promoting a film or an actor/actress who they know can’t win.
I hope that’s not the case, because if this becomes a trend it will take a lot of the fun and excitment out of Awards Season. We need to have as many films – both big and small – in the running each year to continue to make Awards Season the best time of the movie year. But something tells me that another biggie is going to bow out of this year’s race before the calendar turns to November.