The line between Emmys and Oscars for "Movies" is still quite blurry. What to do?
Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 2:05PM 
Perusing the TV Movie Emmy ballots, it's easy to be reminded that streaming movies are always a either/or prospects in terms of awards. Sometimes they're submitted for the Emmys and sometimes Oscars. It's not always clear which it will be since TV and Movies stopped feeling so separate as artforms once streaming upended screen entertainment. Sometimes movies are designed as theatrical features, premiere at film festivals and be bought by a streamer (remember Bad Education?) and try for Emmys. It's difficult to know which is which these days unless you're constantly on the phone with publicists but those decisions can be reversed or made later in some cases. Oscar is requiring theatrical releases again for eligibility purposes but that's easy for major corporations to work around by "four-walling" theaters without any publicity for a week to hedge awards bets. Netflix bought a couple of movie theaters almost specifically for this purpose.
Long story short here are Emmy eligible movies that people (including sometimes myself) might have previously mistaken for movie-movies for various reasons...
FRESH
Despite capable performances from the ever reliable Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar Jones I'll admit I loathed this distasteful horror film which also wants to be an allegory for the nightmare of modern dating. Matt was much more favorable in his review here. Searchlight Pictures made this one but after its Sundance premiere went quickly to Hulu.
JOLT
This action comedy starring Kate Beckinsale was a theatrical release in some countries and streaming only in others including the US. It's on Amazon Prime.
THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE
This musician drama, an A24/Apple coproduction had a limited US theatrical release simultaneously with its online debut in February which would make it Oscar eligible. Instead they opted to submit it for the Emmys. It's on Apple TV+
THE SURVIVOR
Barry Levinson (Rainman, Bugsy, Avalon) was once an Oscar darling. His latest, a post World War II boxing drama starring Ben Foster premiered at TIFF and was a theatrical release in some countries but is considered a television movie in the US. It's on HBO.
A HANDFUL OF OTHER HOPEFULS FOR THE "TV MOVIE" CATEGORY THAT ARE MORE CLEARLY TV MOVIES:
Three Months - coming of age drama with Troye Sivan, Brianne Tju, and Viveik Kalra (Paramount+)
The Fallout - high school drama with Jenna Ortega and Maddie Zeigler (HBO)
I Want You Back - romcom with Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Gina Rodriguez, and Manny Jacinto (Amazon)
Crush - high school romcom with Rowan Blanchard and Auli'i Cravalho (Hulu)
Single All the Way - gay romcom with Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, and Luke Macfarlane (Netflix)
The Voyeurs - erotic drama with Sydney Sweeney, Justice Smith, and Ben Hardy (Amazon)
The Valet - romcom with Samara Weaving and Eugenio Derbez (Hulu)
WHICH MOVIES ARE YOU ROOTING FOR IN TERMS OF THIS CATEGORY?
WHAT ABOUT NEXT YEAR?
Sadly this "it's actually a tv movie!" phenomenon could still happen to recent releases like Fire Island, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and Good Luck To You Leo Grande .
All three had film festival debuts and all three have praise-worthy work in various categories, particularly Emma Thompson's absolutely stunning lead actress work in the sexual drama Good Luck to You Leo Grande. Those three films won't be in play for the 2022 Emmys since they debuted after the eligibility cut-off but they could still be dubbed TV movies for the 2023 Emmys. In the past we've just gone along with Emmy/Oscar rulings for our own top ten lists and Film Bitch Awards but that's becoming increasingly difficult to do since sometimes you don't know for months after something premieres which prize it's going for. Theoretically you could place a movie on your official top ten list and vote for it at your film critics organization and then find out after the fact that it's not a 'movie' after all, despite being made my prominent film studios and festival runs because 'no, it's actually going to be submitted for the Emmys'. The industry's top awards shows function on different timetables so streaming distribution companies, who tend to bankroll both Emmy and Oscar campaigns depending on the film, can theoretically change their mind at any given moment.
What to do... what to do? Would love to hear your opinion on this matter. I have been considering changing my own awards to 'anything that is feature-length is a Movie" (easy!) with no distinction about how it's distributed since that keeps changing and often differs on the same movie from country to country!'. It's easier with series as those are obviously television; their only arguable cinematic equivalents are serials (which no longer exist) or tentpole franchises which are often years between 'episodes', excuse me "installments", so they feel like proper movies... at least if they're made well.
Reader Comments (14)
Good article and that reminds me, let me know if you are going to updated your 95th Academy Awards nominations predications for the summer edition please.
For my personal awards that exist in a private, needlessly complicated Google spreadsheet that few people see, I consider any feature-length project as cinema. We decided to do the same at the Portuguese site I also write for since the separation between Cinema and TV was getting so blurry. So now, we divide things between Feature Films (Cinema) and Series (TV).
Categorising art by the metric of commercial distribution (which varies from territory to territory) feels beyond arbitrary at this point.
Anything that’s feature length is probably a good way to go but it’ll probably cost some productions a higher nomination count. Two years ago I had BOYS IN THE BAND in my personal tv awards but then when it competed for Oscar (did it even play in any theatres) I switched it. I think it got 1 movie nomination in my awards but it would have gotten more tv ones. Ah well.
I contend this is a decades old discussion. Do you remember the cable ACE awards that differentiated cable programming from network shows? That was ultimately abandoned for Emmys.
Theatrical films have battled television movies since the 1950s. The Oscars have honored remakes of television movies since Marty, Days of Wine and Roses, and Charley to name a few.
And is there any doubt that given a theatrical release Cicely Tyson would have an Oscar instead of an Emmy as Best Actress for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman? (The Oscar for that eligibility period was a second win for Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class.)
This debate is all show BUSINESS. An award lifts box office receipts. Awards, like the Independent Spirit Awards, can draw attention to underseen films.
We’re reading The Film Experience because we like prizes. We enjoy feeling smug when our pick wins. We relish debating bad choices.
The label of Emmy or Oscar doesn’t matter to me. I just wanna see great cinema.
The way TV and film have gone has blurred the lines and i'm not sure it can be resolved,only the BIG films seem to get the push theatrically.
On a side note if Grey Gardens had been released to cinemas Drew Barrymore would be an Oscar nominee maybe a winner by now.
Mr Ripley79- Clare Danes probably gets nominated too if Temple Grandin was a theatrical release.
I'm with Claudio- for my own awards I would consider standalone movies or miniseries with other theatrical releases. I've had Angels in America, And Then There Were None, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee competing with films only in cinemas.
For the longest time, I've stuck with where the films are submitted. If a film is submitted to the Emmys, then it's a TV movie. (Cláudio and I has had discussions, even arguments, about this topic.)
But two years into the pandemic, it has just made it very obvious that this is arbitrary and what separates theatrical from television apparently is in the hands of people doing paperworks in submitting them for awards consideration. It's ridiculous at this point.
I am starting to consider categorizing a film with how it was made/how it first premiered. Like how film festival acquisitions are obviously intended for theatrical release. But that would also complicate some stuff since some films intended for television/streaming release did premiere in film festivals, the same way some episodic series do.
Maybe the only way forward is to do it by format - episodic storytelling is television, feature-length productions are film. But how about film series? I might just as well revert to the first suggestion I made.
The last thing I would want is to have films separated between TV and cinema with the spectacle one brings - small-scale films are television, tentpole films are cinema.
I typically just count all feature-length movies as eligible for year-end awards and top 10 lists because my mentality is that even if it was first shown on TV, if its quality is such that it can stand alongside that year’s top theatrical releases, then it deserves to be praised just the same as them. Plus the whole issue of it varying between countries whether it’s a theatrical or TV release makes me think we should just scrap the distinction altogether, because it seems silly that someone in the UK could put a film on their top 10 list but I as an American can’t simply because it was exclusive to a streaming service here.
Besides, plenty of people place Fanny and Alexander on their all-time lists and are actually referring to the TV version, which is generally considered to be superior to the theatrical cut. Same thing with Dekalog. Great films that premiered on TV are still great films. I think where I draw the line is when I see people count Twin Peaks: The Return as a movie. I understand that David Lynch has said he thinks of it as a very long movie, but it’s the third season of a television series.
lots of similar readings here. But i have to draw the line at miniseries. They're still episodic so they're television. They were always intended to be viewed in installments, not at once. But sometimes i think the miniseries craze is obscuring the fact that some of them are just long movies and are only padded a bit so that they can fit into the craze. Thinking of things like the three hour long 'miniseries' like A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL or whatnot which would work just as well or better as a feature with the teensiest trim.
I agree with Juan Carlos' suggestion that format should be considered. ie: episodic vs feature length. (Mini-series annoyance aside.) This discussion is so frustrating since many of the works that would realistically benefit from awards exposure can't be recognized with the status they deserve. The Academy and critics groups should extend the flexibility they gave during the first two years of COVID since the industry is still disrupted directly because of the pandemic. Most of the theatrical screens right now are block-booked with films with which the studios and cinemas hope to print money. I get that, but films like Fire Island and Good Luck to You Leo Grande *would* have found audiences in theatres! Not on the scale of Top Gun: Maverick, but presumably respectable arthouse numbers.
I track our awards contenders for the Toronto Critics and it's a bit crazy the number of films that won't be eligible this year unless our rules change. Things like Navalny and Turning Red, which are both major works by local talents and screened theatrically in festivals or one-day "premiere" events before getting ditched onto streaming, can't be recognized even though most members of our group covered them. And like, if I have to four-wall a theatre for a week to make Emma Thompson eligible, then fine. Status quo has got to go.
@Pat Mullen: The Academy wants to bring its rules back to pre-pandemic, insensitive to how release models, business attitudes, audience behavior, and the over-all accessibility to filmgoing has not been terribly changed by the pandemic. It makes the reverting of rules out-of-touch with the realities on the ground. Arbitrary and stupid even.
@Nathaniel R
Since Mrs. Harris told me in third grade the sky had to be blue in my drawing, I have never understood those who want to restrict art. Why does it matter if a film is long or told in episodes?
The Tonys recognized best Play winners The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby in 1980 and The Coast of Utopia in 2007. Each were multiple plays linked. The eight and a half hours of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby felt like an hour. Such a thrilling experience. To fail to acknowledge it due to length or non-traditional presentation seems arbitrary and counterproductive.
The Los Angeles Film Critics award Best Film to multiple linked films Little Dorrit in 1978 and Small Axe in 2020. These prizes brought attention and audiences to atypical films.
Should we exclude Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past from consideration for favorite novel due to its length?
The argument for arbitrary rules to qualify and disqualify art from celebration is off putting. Sure the average two hour movie is fairly commonplace and worthy of recognition. It’s acceptable to acknowledge that occasionally something longer can be worthwhile.
I honestly was embarrassed by Single all the way and Fire Island...two mainstream, bland and unballanced gayxplotation films...
For how it is done, with honesty and balancing...
Chasing Amy
Bearcity (1,2 and 3)
Bear Cub (Cachorro)
Taxi Zum Klo
L'inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake)
... among many more.
Finbar -- of course its accceptable to vary in length but a series is not a movie, no matter how good it is. .A story told in separate episodes and exhibited separately over a period of time is A SERIES. They are two different artforms. Both are valid but i dont understand the desire to pretend they're the same thing so as to "not restrict" art.
Jesus -- the fact that you can lump 'single all the way' in with 'fire island' suggests to me that you weren't really watching the second one with an open mind. The first, cute as it is, is a mainstream bland obviously corporate thing... it's exactly like a tv movie in every way. The other thing is a real film, with a sly clever personal screenplay, great performances, and beautiful filmmaking.