Please welcome our new contributor Kieran Scarlett.
Dope (discussed here) hits theaters again this weekend. The film made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival in January before opening wide earlier this summer to slightly less rapturous response and modest box office. Not that $16 million for a movie with a production budget of $700 000 is anything to sneeze at, mind you. Still, it's not quite the sleeper hit many at Sundance thought it would be. Will it be able to improve on those numbers? Perhaps.
Is there hope for Dope?
With Straight Outta Compton performing very well, Dope's obsession with the early 90s could play well on re-release. Or will the audiences just see the megahit rap biopic and pass over the Sundance indie altogether?
With the upcoming re-release of Dope and yesterday's DVD and Blu-ray release of Mad Max Fury Road (reviewed here), the question of awards prospects for films released in the first half of the year comes into play. It's possible that Dope's re-release could be priming the pump for an awards campaign - a reminder of The Little Indie They Thought Could And Still Might. Awards wise, it's going to be an uphill climb for something like Dope. Even if one takes into account the fact that the Academy has come under fire recently for lack of diversity in its nominations and might be looking to fix that, Dope may still have trouble standing up against other efforts. There's Tangerine, which in addition to being an absolute joy of a film has a better hook in terms of an awards narrative. And there's the aforementioned Straight Outta Compton, both a critical and commercial success. Still, if Dope is indeed trying to make an awards play, a re-release right now is a wise move, right before the Telluride Film Festival kicks off and things typically start to get very noisy in the world of awards punditry.
Have you seen Dope yet? It's your last chance to check out Rick Famuyiwa's love letter to '90s hip-hop nostalgia before its DVD release next month.
Kieran is a Canadian expat whose love affair with movies began with Judy Garland and Julie Andrews. He thanks his older brother for his film fanaticism and apologizes profusely for dragging him to see "Cold Mountain" on opening weekend because 'people in it might get nominated for stuff.' He received his MFA in writing from the American Film institute. He spends a lot of time thinking about the 1974 Best Actress race, admiring Dorothy Malone's mambo skills and longing for the return of Holly Hunter. Kieran can be found in Los Angeles, writing, working on movies and searching for the perfect arthouse theater with good parking. [Follow him on Twitter.]