What's next for our Oscar champions?
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:00PM Another Awards Season is over and we have newly anointed champions of the Academy Awards to applaud and celebrate. As cinephiles, the best way we have of celebrating is surely to watch and appreciate these filmmakers' work. With that in mind, let's investigate the prospects of the Oscar Class of 2019, many of which already have their next movies lined up, some already in post-production even.
First up, we have the night's greatest star - the one and only Bong Joon-ho…
BONG JOON-HO
This South Korean master of cinema has blessed us with the glory of Parasite and reaped Oscar gold for his efforts. After what we assume was a wild night of partying "I'll drink till morning", Bong Joon-ho will be returning home to rest, a wish he has expressed many times during the Oscar race. As of right now, he doesn't seem to have a lot of concrete projects lined up, though he did mention two films in development during the backstage interviews on Oscar night, one in English the other in Korean. Apart from that, there are the TV adaptations of Snowpiercer and Parasite. While the latter is still very much in early development, the former is scheduled to premiere May 31st. The show stars Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs with Bong Joon-ho as an executive producer.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX
Next up for our new Best Actor winner is a Mike Mills film titled C'mon C'mon. Little is known about the project, but the director's two previous projects – Beginners and 20th Century Women – bode well for the quality of this mysterious picture. This is also good news for Phoenix's fans since he tends to do his best work when challenged by creative auteurs like Lynne Ramsay, Paul Thomas Anderson, James Gray and now, Mike Mills.
LAURA DERN
The sole winner out of the Marriage Story team is set to reprise her famous role of Ellie Sattler in the third Jurassic World movie, scheduled to be released in 2021.
BRAD PITT
While he has many producing gigs in his future, Brad Pitt has only one acting project lined up for the next few years. That's Babylon, Damien Chazelle's next sojourn through Hollywood's past alongside Emma Stone. Considering Pitt just won for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, we can't blame him for sticking to movies about tinseltown's troubled past. It certainly worked out for him this time.
TAIKA WAITITI
Out of this crop of Oscar winners, Taika Waititi is the busiest. On one hand, Jojo Rabbit's handsome director has been handed the reigns of more Disney properties with Thor: Love and Thunder and an, as of yet, untitled Star Wars film. He also has Next Goal Wins scheduled for a 2021 release, a sports comedy starring Elisabeth Moss and Michael Fassbender. There's also the rumored We're Wolves, a follow-up to his delightful vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, as well as a serialization of Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. All of that and he's also supposed to write a new Flash Gordon movie. Everything's coming up Taika.
ANDREW BUCKLAND & MICHAEL MCCUSKER
The editors behind Ford v Ferrari's thrilling race scenes have a variety of projects coming up. Buckland is one of the editors in charge of the ever-delayed New Mutants and he's also done the cutting for The Empty Man, a horror movie starring Stephen Root and Marin Ireland. As for McCusker, he's also keeping things horror-adjacent with Daniel Lusko's Quandary.
NANCY HAIGH
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood's brilliant set decorator is the woman in charge of filling A Quiet Place 2 with the clutter of post-apocalyptic reality. While that gig is unlikely to bring her back to the Dolby Theatre you never know. Stranger things have happened.
JACQUELINE DURRAN
With two Oscars under her belt and an enviable filmography, Durran is one of Hollywood's top costume designers. The mind behind Little Women's modernized look at the 19th century is the one responsible for the next version of Batman. We can't wait to see what she does with the iconic hero now that he's played by Robert Pattinson. In the next Batman production, she'll be joined by 1917's Oscar-winning special effects supervisor Dominic Tuohy and sound mixer Stuart Wilson.
ANNE MORGAN
Bombshell's hair department head has a bizarre little collection of projects opening in 2020. First up, she's got Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming Top Gun sequel. More interesting, however, is her involvement in FX's Miss America. Morgan is the hair designer for the miniseries starring Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Rose Byrne, and many more wonderful actresses. Maybe she can add an Emmy to her Oscar next summer?
STEVEN BOGNAR & JULIA REICHERT
The American Factory directors have another promising project in the pipeline. The movie's called 9 to 5: The Story of A Movement and is set to open at South by Southwest Film Festival this March.
As for the nominees, many stars have a bunch of prestigious films opening in the next few years. If we're talking strictly Oscar, then Sir Anthony Hopkins is the one to look out for. The Welsh actor, nominated this year for his performance in The Two Popes, has been showered with luminous reviews out of Sundance for his work in The Father. Could he be a contender for next year's Best Actor statuette or is it way too early to start speculating?
Reader Comments (20)
Academy Awards winners Bong Joon-Ho and Taika Waititi... it sounds SOOOOO AWESOMMMEEEEE
Absolutely not too early to start speculating about 2021.
Not a winner this time but have you heard about Almodovar teaming with Tilda Swinton?? https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/pedro-almodovar-tilda-swinton-a-manual-for-cleaning-women-1202209989/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
What's next for Zeee?
And Season 2 of the TV adaptation of What We Do in the Shadows premieres April 15 on FX. Taika exec-produced, wrote and (briefly) acted in Season 1, so I imagine he's still involved.
@ Ignacio
I posted that Almodóvar news under the Box Office post yesterday... ;-)
Way way too soon.
@Travis - She has none. It wouldn't have been hard for Claudio to point that out but the despise this site has for Zellweger is just sick and ridiculous.
Mark -- I'm sorry if you think I'm spiteful towards Renée since her absence here was never intended as a commentary on her win or any sort of jibe. I couldn't find anything about any future projects for Renée or the other winners so I simply didn't mention them. Deakins also doesn't have anything announced so he isn't here, for instance.
Funnily enough, I rewatched Judy today and am warming a bit towards her, the performance and her Oscar win. I still wouldn't have voted for her, but she's far from a bad Best Actress winner.
In any case, thank you for the feedback. I'll try to not sound so negative about Renée in the future. For fans of her, I understand it might become exhausting to want to celebrate her victory and smash against walls of negativism. I'm sorry.
@Claudio - Not a fan of Zellweger, I've seen less than a quarter of her filmography, just tired of the bad blood around her on this site, not directly from you
mark, i write regularly for the site and am a huge Renee lover. i wrote this article about her last year...http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2019/4/25/happy-50th-to-renee-zellweger.html
Renee was part of the Netflix show What/If I think. Will there be a season 2? My friends were talking about the show and said she was very good in it. Like a Mrs. Robinson but with a lot more power.
In other news... Viggo Mortensen got rave reviews for his directorial debut, Falling. He plays a gay man whose Father (Lance Henriksen) is an irrepressible bigot with a volcanic temper. Viggo also wrote the script and the music. Will there be plenty of nominations come 2021?
Cláudio, it’s more that in the past (and present a bit too) Nathaniel and this site have been unnecessarily harsh on Zellweger, long after he established again and again that he didn’t like most of her work. She also has a similar talk show personality and history with Botox that Kidman does, so that makes the disparity in treatment between those two as an example more egregious.
I believe there are some short memories here when it comes to Renee. Prior to Cold Mountain, Nat and Co. were fans of several of her performances - Nurse Betty and Bridget 1 particularly spring to mind. I also remember a lot of praise for her in Down with Love. But the weird behavior she adopted with an astoundingly bad performance in Cold Mountain followed her in performances like Bridget 2, Mrs. Potter, and the one I really hated, Leatherheads.
But such is life in our 21st century polarized society I guess. One can not be critical without being labeled a hater by the fandom.
It's been nice seeing her return to prior form with Bridget 3 and now Judy. I'm not a fan of the film Judy but I thought she did a nice job.
I hope all the praise for Bong won't change anything for him. He pretty much has knocked it out of the park with every single film he's done so far, and I'd hate to see that ruined by any kind of unreasonable expectations after all this.
I'm most curious to see what Zellweger does next. Really, where does she go from here? A year or two ago I would never have thought she'd be anywhere near an Oscar race again. Now she's won her second and seemingly has no new projects lined up. I can't see her returning to her late 90s/early 00s heights but will she disappear from movies again? What kind of career will she have? It'll be interesting to see what happens next for her.
Indiewire says that Taika Waititi already completed photography for "Next Goal Wins" and could be released this fall. Quick turnaround for him.
Zellweger was born to be in musicals. She needs another "Chicago"
Amazing post! it's a very informative and interesting article for me. I really appreciate your hard work and experience. I'm waiting for more posts like this. Thanks for sharing!
I can see Renee as Sally in that Follies film.
Sally is 49.