According to Variety, it's now official: Martin Scorsese's Silence is opening this year after all on December 23rd despite no trailer, no poster, no promotional materials, and a current running time of well over 3 hours. The most curious aspect of this is that Paramount already has an overstuffed plate without it: Arrival should be a major player because it's great, Fences should be a major player if it's any good at all since it has two beloved stars doing award winning roles in the first motion picture based on an August Wilson play, and Florence Foster Jenkins is, I think, underpredicted since it's a handsome production with an unusual angle on the arts that will surely appeal to voters and should expect a boost from Golden Globe attention.
Curiously, despite twelve years of evidence that Oscar voters are definitely preferring films with October or November bows (no December release has won Best Picture since Million Dollar Baby), despite awards bodies pushing their deadlines even earlier this year, distributors are pushing the other way with force...
December is crazy stacked with hopefuls, all of which will try to wrestle media attention away from each other during the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story explosion. It should be interesting. And messy. Casualties surely await. Last year The Revenant did very well for itself with the late December strategy but it had Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the most bankable stars in the world.
Films going wide between December 16th and Christmas
- Assassin's Creed
- Collateral Beauty
- Fences
- Gold
- La La Land
- Passengers
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- Sing!
- The Space Between Us
- Why Him?
November limited releases like Nocturnal Animals, Lion, Loving , and Elle will also be trying to expand during December while the following limited releases open and pray for last minute attention...
I kind of wish 20th Century Women would wait til 2017. I hate to see a Mike Mills movie get ignored in the glut. His last film was such a delicate beauty
- 20th Century Women
- Jackie
- Julieta (foreign film hopeful)
- Live By Night
- A Monster Calls (It's move to December 23rd is still so puzzling. It would have been perfect for October and a slow build. Will people who want fantasy care about anything beyond Passengers and the new Star Wars that week?)
- Neruda (foreign film hopeful)
- Paterson
- The Salesman (foreign film hopeful)
- Silence
- Toni Erdmann (foreign film hopeful)
ALL THE OSCAR CHARTS HAVE BEEN UPDATED
INDEX
handy chart and nomination tallies
PIC | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | ACTRESS | SUPP. ACTOR | SUPP. ACTRESS
the marquee categories
FOREIGN | FOREIGN A-F | FOREIGN F-N | FOREIGN N-Z
73 submitted thus far
VISUALS | AURALS | ANIMATION & DOCS | SCREENPLAYS
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