How many of the spring/summer hits will Oscar recognize?
Monday, July 11, 2022 at 3:28PM by Nathaniel R
How many of the year's critically embraced / audience approved movies from the first half of the year will Oscar recognize? Savvy awards fans know that if you open very late you dont necessarily need audiences (or even the critics to a lesser extent) because the voters haven't had time to process the various responses. The only "influence" then becomes the publicity and the awards campaigns themselves, which is what the distributors prefer. That way they control the messaging.
If you open earlier than the second half of December, it's a completely different story. Critical and audience response completely matter as your film takes on various consensus markers like "surprise hit" or "flop" or "respected but didn't connect". All sorts of things happen that unconsciously or consciously affect voting. In short, both critical and audience approval have to be there in order to generate enthusiasm that will justify a campaign later in the year. In that sense we have only four movies that have opened at this writing in 2022 that we must take seriously for prizes at year's end. They are...