A note from Scott: Since our last update, Universal’s Wicked and Paramount’s Gladiator II have fully joined the Oscar race.
Wicked, the first installment of a two-part adaptation of the hit Broadway musical of the same name, had its official LA Academy screening on Nov. 9, attracting the highest turnout of any film this season and garnering a standing ovation. It was also omnipresent beyond that, with an LA premiere later that same day, a premiere in Mexico on Nov. 11 and a ton of press featuring its stars, lead actress Cynthia Erivo and supporting actress Ariana Grande. The consensus reaction, with which I agree, is that the film is very good.
Meanwhile, the review embargo for Paramount’s Gladiator II lifted on Nov. 11. Critics, including The Hollywood Reporter’s, are somewhat mixed on the film overall — it’s at just 75% on Rotten Tomatoes — but the same was true for the original Gladiator 24 years ago (just 80% on RT), and it won the best picture Oscar, so that may not matter. Excitement around the film was certainly palpable at its world premiere on London on Nov. 13, a Royal Film Performance fundraiser attended by King Charles III. The film’s principal talent are now headed to LA for it official Academy screening and Q&A on Saturday.
In other news, only one awards-hopeful opened wide at the box office last weekend: A24’s Heretic, which grossed $11 million, just missing second place. MUBI’s Bird, Searchlight’s A Real Pain and Neon’s Anora, in limited release, also performed well.
The Grammy nominations were announced on Nov. 8, and it’s worth noting that the scores for Challengers (composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) and Dune: Part Two (Hans Zimmer) were among the five nominees for best score soundtrack for visual media (though the latter score appears to be ineligible for the best original score Oscar), while the tune “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” from Twisters (written by Jessie Alexander, Luke Combs and Johnathan Singleton) is one of the five nominees for best song written for visual media. Additionally, the Oscar-eligible Netflix documentary feature The Greatest Night in Pop is up for the best music film Grammy.
Nov. 10 brought the Critics Choice Documentary Awards ceremony, at which the big winners were Warners’ Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Netflix’s Will & Harper. They tied for best feature; Super/Man won in all six categories in which it was nominated. Meanwhile, the doc that came in to the evening with the most noms, Nat Geo’s Sugarcane, walked away with two prizes, best political doc and best true-crime doc.
Another major doc race precursor group, the Cinema Eye Honors, announced its nominations on Nov. 14. Sugarcane landed the most mentions with this group, too, six, including one in the top category, best doc feature. Its competition in that race will be MTV Docs’ Black Box Diaries, Mubi’s Dahomey, Netflix’s Daughters, A24’s Look Into My Eyes, the U.S.-distributor-less No Other Land and Kino Lorber’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.
This coming weekend will be among the busiest weekends of the season, with seemingly everyone scheduling everything around Sunday night’s Governors Awards. Indeed, across Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, there will be literally dozens of screenings and Q&As — among them, Paramount’s September 5 at the PGA with producer Sean Penn; A24’s The Brutalist at CAA with director Brady Corbet, a client of the agency, and his film’s stars; and Netflix’s Maria in Hollywood with Angelina Jolie. There will also be recordings of multiple roundtables bringing together top contenders from across various films and categories. There will be celebrations of full studio slates, such as the one Paramount is throwing at the Sunset Tower Hotel, and of specific individuals, like the one for The Substance writer/director Coralie Fargeat at the residence of the Consul General of France in LA. And the list goes on.
Virtually everyone is in town and everyone is still in the game, so why not?!
Please remember: You can bookmark this URL and return to it at any time to see my latest picks — I intend to update it once a week, usually on Mondays. Think of me like a meteorologist — my aim is to correctly predict what will happen, not to advocate for what I think should happen. My picks are arrived at by screening films, consulting with voters, analyzing campaigns and studying the results of past seasons. I do not rank things that I have not seen, because doing so is just silly. And now for my current forecast …
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