Michael Cieply: Thought For A Hot July – Why Not Shake Up The Oscars With a “Midsummer Rule”?
It’s July 1, summertime, a hot one. Political storms threaten. In West L.A., one of the awards-friendly billboards on Wilshire is blank; another is selling spring water. Not a moment to be worrying about the Oscars.
Or is it?
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Last year on this date, the eventual Best Picture winner Oppenheimer was just three weeks away from its domestic release, and construction fencing down by the beach was already plastered with atomic-blast posters zeroing in on the big prize. (And Barbie would arrive with it.) For what it’s worth, the ensuing Oscar ceremony saw a 4.3 percent bump in its domestic audience, to 19.5 million from 18.7 million the year before.
On July 1, 2022, moreover, Everything Everywhere All at Once had been on screens for 14 weeks, with a long run yet to come. (And Top Gun: Maverick had been running hot since Memorial Day.) The following March, when that fan-driven film won the top Oscar, the broadcast saw viewership jump 11.2 percent, from 16.6 million the year before (when tiny CODA won, as the Covid-depressed audience rebounded).
Granted, two blips don’t make a trend, even in the hair-trigger world of contemporary Web journalism. But they certainly prove that the early-to-midyear release of sophisticated yet popular movies can only help the Oscars.
Which makes this year a little worrisome. Not impossible, but worrisome.
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To date, at least films, Dune: Part Two and Inside Out 2, have made a strong impression on the box office while generating a certain amount of Best Picture buzz. But neither has shown as much awards sizzle as an Oppenheimer or an EEAAO, and both would have to make the very long leap from impressive sequel to top film of the year. It’s happened, but not often.
More, it’s hard to see anything radically altering the equation in the next two months. I count nine horror films in wide release through the end of August, led by last weekend’s hit A Quiet Place: Day One. Those are welcome at the box office, but would face a steep climb with the film Academy’s growing crowd of international sophisticates.
Sing Sing, arriving this month, might have awards prospects, but isn’t an obvious blockbuster. Horizon, apparently not. In fact, the kind of all-in, audience-plus-critics excitement that makes for a truly popular picture — and Oscar show — might have to wait for Joker: Folie a Deux in October. And that one, again, is a sequel.
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Come late August and early September, of course, the festivals and awards insiders will pry open the Oscar race with a flurry of fine films, some of which have already been seen in Cannes. But any of those, even if they hit big, will already have missed the summer audience wave, which, as we’ve learned, can do much to float the Academy’s fragile boat come Oscar time.
And that’s especially important this year, as negotiations begin toward a new long-term Oscar broadcast and/or streaming contract, to succeed the current deal, which expires in 2028. A weak broadcast in March would put a damper on things, and an audience collapse, akin to that of 2021, might trigger who knows what desperate notion. Could ABC demand that remaining years in its existing deal, reached when the Oscars were double their current size, be folded into a new contract at a reduced rate? God forbid. Or might the Academy find itself using non-Oscar assets — digital rights to museum or library collections, for instance — to plump up the negotiating basket? Who knows?
Anyway, it would be much better if there were more vibrant, awards-style pictures in the summer movie mix. Those keep us all engaged. Maybe, once they’ve weathered the coming negotiations, Academy officials should consider a Midsummer Rule, requiring at least one, maybe more, of the Best Picture nominees to have been released before August 1. That would either ease a nomination for one of the summer’s pop pictures, or pressure more awards fare into the blockbuster season.
Mix things up a bit. Steal a beat on the film elites and their fall and winter games. Make the summer less worrisome.
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