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New York, NY (May 15, 2013) – The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today the hiring of Robert Walak as President/MD Europe – Production, Acquisitions & Television. Walak’s new role is effective immediately. The announcement was made by TWC Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein and COO David Glasser. As President/MD Europe – Production, Acquisitions & Television, Walak will be heading and overseeing the UK operations for TWC. Additionally, executive Negeen Yazdi is returning to the company’s London office and being promoted to EVP Europe – Acquisitions and Co-Productions.
Search Results for: “The King's Speech”
The Weinstein Company Names Robert Walak President/MD Europe, Ups Negeen Yazdi To EVP Europe
Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman Set For ‘Macbeth’
Film4′s film adaptation of the Shakespeare classic has Snowtown helmer Justin Kurzel attached to direct. Project is glued together by a number of prior relationships. Michael Fassbender is attached to play the iconic title antihero, with Natalie Portman attached to play his scheming Lady Macbeth. The pair recently filmed Terrence Malick’s untitled Austin-set pic together. Script is by Todd Luiso and Jacob Koskoff, who previously teamed up on 2009′s The Marc Pease Experience. Fassbender’s Shame producers Iaian Canning and Emile Sherman, whose UK-Australia See-Saw banner also produced The King’s Speech, are producing with Film4. Sherman had a hand in financing Kurzel’s feature debut Snowtown (AKA The Snowtown Murders). Kurzel, Fassbender, and Portman are repped by CAA.
Tom Hooper, Ang Lee, David Fincher And Steven Spielberg Eye Intriguing Movies
EXCLUSIVE: Deadline scooped the news today that Safety Not Guaranteed helmer Colin Trevorrow landed the plum gig of Jurassic Park 4, a move which could catapult him to the director A-list. There is a lot of movement going on among directors that will reverberate depending on who takes what job.
First up, Steven Spielberg has ended his long flirtation with directing Gods And Kings, the epic-sized Warner Bros film about life of Moses based on the script by Michael Green and Stuart Hazeldine. That puts Warner Bros in a bind because of the rival Moses project, the Adam Cooper/Bill Collage-scripted Exodus, which is gathering steam at Fox, with Ridley Scott looking to mobilize that as soon as he completes The Counselor. But Warner Bros is now out to Ang Lee, who just won the Best Director Oscar for Life Of Pi. I’m told he’s intrigued with the project but hasn’t had a formal meeting on the script. Imagine what either director can do with that subject matter, and with the ratings on History Channel’s The Bible miniseries, the audience is certainly there. Spielberg hasn’t dropped the project for another; while he postponed his next film Robopocalypse, he hasn’t replaced it with anything as he continues to develop that robot pic. Spielberg also recently told French TV he’s developing a Napoleon miniseries for TV based on Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay and research. for Read More »
Tom Shadyac Eyes ‘The Intouchables’ Remake As Return To Comedy Helming
EXCLUSIVE: Tom Shadyac, once a prolific director of blockbuster comedies before a near-death experience sent him on a life-changing journey chronicled in his feature documentary I Am, is returning to laffer mode. Shadyac is in talks with The Weinstein Company to helm its remake of the Olivier Nakache/Eric Toledano French sensation The Intouchables.
TWC has a script by Paul Feig, and Colin Firth has been circling to star, though casting is not locked. The picture seems primed for remake — it grossed $416 million overseas, and only $10 million domestic. That is a decent number for a foreign film but leaves a lot of room for an American audience to discover the story. TWC released it here and got remake rights as part of the bargain. Feig was once going to make it his directorial follow-up to Bridesmaids but he left the project after writing the screenplay about an aristocrat who, after being paralyzed in a hang-gliding accident, hires a young man from the projects to be his caretaker. TWC’s Dylan Sellers has been shepherding the redo. Read More »
‘King’s Speech’ Producers & Sunstar To Film Man’s Quest To Find His Mother
Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney.
Indian-born Saroo Brierley spent 25 years searching for his birth mother, from whom he was separated at age 5. He found her last year and has penned an autobiography to be published by Penguin later this year. See-Saw Films’ Emile Sherman and Iain Canning (The King’s Speech, Shame, Top Of The Lake) and Sunstar Entertainment, which reps Brierley, announced Thursday (Oz local time) they will produce a movie based on the book. No screenwriter or 
director is attached. Brierley was adopted by a family in Hobart, Tasmania where he still lives. He searched for his birth mother using Google Earth and childhood memories of his Khandwa hometown. See-Saw’s latest film Tracks, which recounts the true story of Robyn Davidson’s trek across the Outback, starring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver and directed by John Curran, is in post. Formed in 2010 by Andrew Fraser, Daniel Starling and Shahen Mekertichian, Sunstar Entertainment announced last year it would co-produce with Brookwell McNamara Entertainment True Spirit, the saga of Australian sailor Jessica Watson who in 2010 at age 16 became the youngest person ever to sail solo around the world. That film is due to shoot in Sydney and the Gold Coast later this year, directed by Soul Surfer helmer and BME principal Sean McNamara. Paramount has Australian rights. Sunstar manages Watson. Sunstar is also developing Inmate 002, the true story … Read More »
Robert Walak Exiting Alliance Films Following Takeover By eOne
With eOne‘s $230M acquisition of rival Canadian giant Alliance Films completed earlier this month, the executive structure in the UK, where the companies overlapped, is coming into somewhat clearer focus. On the eve of the European Film Market in Berlin, eOne today said that Alliance SVP Worldwide Acquisitions and Productions, Robert Walak, is leaving the company to pursue other ventures. The well-liked London-based exec had been at Alliance since 2003 and oversaw the acquisitions of such important titles as The Twilight Saga series in Spain and The King’s Speech and The Woman In Black for the UK. Also leaving is Jon Bourdillon, who headed up home entertainment at eOne. He will be replaced by Ken McMahon of Alliance subsidiary Momentum. Read More »
Mike Fleming Q&As Harvey Weinstein: On Oscars, Sundance, Obama, And Getting The Web To Pay Up For Borrowed Content
EXCLUSIVE: Last Monday, after a trade report had him skipping Park City for the D.C. inauguration, Harvey Weinstein met me in Sundance for what has become an annual sit down lunch. He and his COO David Glasser looked as tired as I felt—they brokered and I covered an all-night negotiation for Fruitvale, a film that went on to win all the big festival prizes. A fixture at Sundance since turning the festival into a lucrative marketplace with Steven Soderbergh’s crossover success sex, lies & videotape, Weinstein is as busy right now as a one-armed wallpaper hanger.
Beyond his D.C. stature, Weinstein owns the last two Best Picture Oscars with The King’s Speech and The Artist, and he’s got Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchainedin this year’s wide-open race. He’s making a fortune on a film he didn’t release–The Hobbit–because he made five points of first dollar gross the price for allowing Peter Jackson shop The Lord of the Rings and subsequent Tolkien films elsewhere when Michael Eisner refused to let Weinstein make them at Miramax. The Hobbit is closing in on $1 billion in worldwide gross. If all that isn’t enough, Harvey recently learned that he and his fashion designer wife, Georgina Chapman, are now expecting their second child together (that will make five children for the mogul). In between all that chaos, Weinstein took an hour to discuss politics, Sundance and of course the Oscars. … Read More »
Cascade Pictures Boards ‘The Lady Who Went Too Far’ From ‘King’s Speech’ Duo
UK-based financier Cascade Pictures, which launched at Toronto in September, has boarded its first feature, The Lady Who Went Too Far. Oscar-winning King’s Speech writer David Seidler is adapting the screenplay from Kristen Ellis’ biography, Star Of The Morning. The King’s Speech‘s Gareth Unwin, of Bedlam Productions, is producing. Story follows the true tale of Britain’s Lady Hester Stanhope, who rejected London society in the early 1800s to travel across the Mediterranean and into the Middle East, where she played a major role in stifling Napoleon’s advances towards India. The pioneering Stanhope was a controversial figure in her time and the film will mix elements of romance, espionage and adventure. A production start is being eyed for later this year. Bedlam is producing with support from Cascade, the BFI Film Fund, British Film Company, HW Buffalo & RPTVA. Cascade CEO Mark Fisher says, “Working with Gareth and David to bring this enthralling story to screen is the best opening scene for Cascade as a company.”
SAG Awards Film: ‘Argo’ On A Roll; Is It Unstoppable?
Though the media often refer to Outstanding Cast In A Motion Picture award as the Screen Actors Guild’s version
of Best Picture, SAG balks at the comparison. The actors say their winners don’t always match up and in fact are strictly an honor for a cast. But Argo‘s big win in SAG’s marquee film category tonight is a Best Picture award. And there can be no question now that Argo is on a roll. Voters just seem to like this picture, and sometimes that’s all it takes. Right now its key rivals are probably beginning to feel like Argo is holding their Best Picture hopes hostage.
Related: SAG Awards To ‘Argo’ Cast, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence
With the PGA win last night, and recent Critics Choice and Golden Globe wins for Picture and Director, Ben Affleck‘s 3rd outing as helmer is so far proving that three’s the charm. Those first two all-important Guild contests have very good predictive track records when it comes to Oscar. As someone connected with Argo‘s campaign emailed me tonight, “We’re making progress.” That’s an understatement. This morning one Academy voter who was angry after the directors branch snubbed Ben Affleck emailed this to me: “I voted for Argo for a SAG award. And if it wins tonight the world will see the all-powerful wizard: the Academy is not so smart.” Not surprisingly that same voter plans to give a first-place Best Picture vote to Argo – and … Read More »
PGA Win: Is ‘Argo’ Now Oscar Frontrunner?
It’s starting to get serious. This wild ride of an awards season may not be predictable, according to conventional wisdom. But in the end the winner of the Producer Guild’s Best Picture award Saturday night was completely predictable in my opinion. After all, Warner Bros’ Argo features a key role for a Hollywood movie producer who rises to the occasion and helps make a difference in the world, winning the hearts and minds of a 
group of producers. Imagine that. This is the first guild to weigh in so we have a tentative frontrunner in Argo now for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture. Had producer/director/star Ben Affleck not been snubbed for a Best Director Oscar, the word “tentative” wouldn’t even be used. When I talked to Affleck in the Beverly Hilton ballroom moments after his picture won, he still seemed to be reeling from the roller coaster ride he’s been on, but clearly happy. (Co-producer Grant Heslov suggested they should call their fellow producer George Clooney in Berlin and tell him the good news.) “When I didn’t get the Best Director nomination after everybody told me I would, I was depressed. But then that same day I won at Critics Choice which was really torturous because everyone kept asking me all night how I felt,” Affleck told me. “Then we win at the Globes.” Argo was also named the year’s Best Picture at the Critics … Read More »
OSCARS: Who Got Snubbed By Academy?
Some Oscar dreams flourished and some were dashed with this morning’s announcement of the 85th annual Academy Award nominations. Academy voters can be as harsh as they can be predictable, and some snubs seem designed to sting. Thankfully some take it with a degree of humor. “I just got snubbed for a flu shot at CVS,” tweeted Prometheus co-writer Damon Lindelof today. Here are some of the directors, films and actors who got left out today even though they might have deserved better.
Related: OSCARS: 85th Academy Award Nominations
Kathryn Bigelow – The Zero Dark Thirty director was the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker– she won’t be repeating that feat this year even though her film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden was nominated for Best Picture. “Kathryn Bigelow was robbed. So f—ed up. #recount,” tweeted ZD30 producer Megan Ellison after the nominations were announced Thursday.
Leonardo DiCaprio – He got a Supporting Actor nomination from the Golden Globes for his Calvin Candie in Django Unchained but nothing today — cast mate Christoph Waltz got the nod.
Marion Cotillard – No Best Actress for her Rust and Bone performance?
The Intouchables – A big hit at home and France’s submission for Best Foreign film, this comedy-drama Weinstein released movie got treated like an untouchable.
Ben Affleck – No Best Director or Best Actor for Argo. Really? Even though it got a Best Picture nomination?
Related: OSCARS: Nominations By Studio & Distributor
Skyfall – Yes it’s a James Bond movie. But, as the PGA recognized, it is a Sam Mendes-directed Bond movie starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes and Javier Bardem. It would have been a nice addition to the tribute the Academy plans for the Bond movies’ 50th anniversary during the Oscarcast, but Oscar himself was neither shaken nor stirred beyond Adele’s best song nom.
Cloud Atlas – Not even a technical nomination? The Academy must have really hated it.
John Hawkes – His performance in The Sessions made this past nominee seem a sure thing for a Academy Award nomination – what happened Oscar?
Rise Of The Guardians – That must have really hurt over at DreamWorks Animation this morning.
Related: OSCARS: Nominations By Picture
Quentin Tarantino – The Golden Globes gave the Django Unchained helmer a nomination and the Academy gave the movie itself a Best Picture nomination today but no Best Director for Quentin? Too much controversy?
Perks Of Being A Wallflower – If any movie called out for Best Adapted Screenplay, it was this coming of ager directed and written by Stephen Chbosky based on his own acclaimed 1999 novel. And yet Oscar offered no perks at all.
Christopher Nolan – Holy Oversight, Batman! Even though Inception was nominated for Best Picture in 2010 and he’s picked up a pair of writing noms, The Dark Knight Rises director has never received a nomination for his helming work — including on the hugely successful Batman franchise. And just like with 2005’s Batman Begins and 2008’s The Dark Knight, Nolan was again left off the Best Director list. Read More »
BAFTA Nominations Announced: ‘Lincoln’ Leads Followed By ‘Les Mis’ & ‘Life Of Pi’; Spielberg & Hooper Not Among Director Field
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln leads the pack of nominees (see full list below) for the 65th EE BAFTA Awards, which were announced this morning in London by Alice Eve and Jeremy Irvine. Lincoln scored 10 nominations, though it did not pick up a directing mention. Ang Lee’s Life Of Pi and Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables each got nine nods, but Hooper (nominated here for The King’s Speech in 2010) failed to make the directing category. Working Title’s Tim Bevan, who has both Les Mis and Anna Karenina vying for prizes this year, told me he was surprised that Spielberg and Hooper missed out on directing slots but called it an “interesting year because [nominations] seem to be spread all over the place.” The takeaway, he said, is that Spielberg and Hooper are “swimming in a pool of extreme talent this year. Which is great for the movie business.”
Meanwhile, Skyfall, now the highest-grossing film in UK history, was nominated eight times, yet was noted in the Best British Film category and not the overall Best Film group. The only picture to cross over those two fields was Les Mis. The trio of Life Of Pi, Ben Affleck’s Argo and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty have both Best Film and Best Director slots. The two Best Director candidates whose films were not mentioned in the Best Film group are Michael Haneke for Amour (although it did also land Foreign Language, Original Screenplay and Leading Actress nods) and Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained, which also picked up nominations for Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz and Editing. Read More »
Bad News For Weinstein As Major Studios Take Over DGA Race: Analysis
This morning’s just-announced DGA Award nominations are good news for the major studios and bad news for
Harvey Weinstein. With Ben Affleck for Warner Bros’ Argo, Kathryn Bigelow for Sony’s Zero Dark Thirty, Tom Hooper for Universal’s Les Miserables, Ang Lee for 20th Century Fox’s Life Of Pi and Steven Spielberg for Disney/Dreamworks Lincoln, it was a clean sweep for the majors — a continuing roaring comeback in Oscar contenders for the big boys who the past two years have watched The Weinstein Company take Best Picture (and top DGA) honors with small indies like The Artist and The King’s Speech. Clearly, even as their focus is on money-making blockbusters and popcorn entertainment, the majors are no longer sitting on the sidelines when it comes to the Oscars and seem fully invested in the process this year at least.
Related: DGA Award Nominations Announced
It’s highly unusual since the advent of the Miramax takeover of Oscar seasons the past quarter century to see no independent contender in a strong position. But, at least as far as the DGA is concerned, that’s the story here, along with the fact that four of the five nominees are past DGA- and Oscar-directing winners, with Affleck the only newcomer to the DGA club after directing only his third feature film (he is an Oscar winner for co-writing Good Will Hunting). Bigelow and Hooper both won in the last three years and have made a quick return to the golden circle. Spielberg, meanwhile, is the Big Kahuna of the DGA as he is a three-time winner (The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) and now 11-time nominee as well as winner of the guild’s Life Achievement Award. Lee’s enormously impressive technical feat in bringing what was thought to be an unfilmable book, Life Of Pi, so successfully to the big screen is clearly something that appealed to the sensibility of directors, so his nomination was definitely expected. This will make for one of the tightest and most interesting directing races in years at the DGA. Read More »
‘Silver Linings Playbook’ Gets Wider Release In Post-Oscar Nomination Corridor
EXCLUSIVE: On January 18, The Weinstein Company will broaden the release of Silver Linings Playbook to between 2500 and 3000 screens, I’ve confirmed through Harvey Weinstein himself. That will certainly give the David O Russell pic an awareness boost if it is among the films lucky enough to be called out for Best Picture and other Oscar nominations this Thursday.
There has been speculation that the film would broaden after it was platformed November 16 and widened to 750 screens on Christmas. Weinstein told me the film now has things going for it that weren’t there before–the availability of its core cast.
“This is a very unusual distribution pattern for us, but Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Bob De Niro and Jacki Weaver were all off making movies and not available to us,” he said. “Bradley finished The Hangover III Friday night, Jennifer is back from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Bob is back from Last Vegas and Jacki is back from making her film in Australia. There is no point in going wide until you have your guys available. But if you have good word of mouth, we think you can wait, and navigate through the system as these other films get played out.”
Weinstein said he expects the film’s box office to grow as Silver Linings Playbook runs through March. “We’ll get to $40 million before we widen, and if we’ve gotten that … Read More »
Awards Race Moves To Palm Springs: Foreign Film Contenders, Glitzy Gala And Lots Of Oscar Talk
Even as Oscar nomination polls were closing Friday afternoon, the awards season action was already
shifting to the Southern California desert as the 10-day Palm Springs International Film Festival kicked off, not only with its highly publicized Saturday night gala where enormous statuettes are handed out to Oscar hopefuls looking for a boost in the race, but also as a genuinely impressive public showcase for world cinema.
42 of the 71 official Oscar foreign entries are on display at the Fest (which runs through January 13) including 8 of the 9 finalists which made the shortlist. Many of those filmmakers nervously awaiting results, of which of the 9 become the 5 nominees, were at the fest all weekend, even as a select group of about 30 high-profile Academy members (including Meryl Streep, who told me last year she had a great time on this uber committee) in New York and Los Angeles were viewing the finalists and making their choices (to be announced with other Oscar nominees on Thursday morning). Read More »
With Many Contenders Ineligible, What Do WGA Film Nominees Mean For Oscar?
Like the Producers Guild earlier this week, the WGA did not produce a list of film
nominees in the Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay categories that had any surprises. This in itself is not surprising since the WGA (I’m a member) — due to restrictive rules regarding eligibility of films only produced under the guild’s MBA or certain international affiliated collective bargaining agreements — had far less of a field from which to choose. The number of screenplays eligible overall is slightly more than a third of all scripts the Academy’s much smaller voting body is picking from (polls for Oscar nomination voting close today at 5 PM). As usual, we can look for several differences when the Academy reveals their writing nominations January 10th. Although nominees often vary between the two orgs, the final winners are usually much more in sync. Last year, both WGA Award-winning scripts — Midnight In Paris and The Descendants – went on to repeat at the Oscars. In 2010 though, only WGA Adapted Screenplay winner The Social Network repeated at Oscar time, while the Oscar winner for Original Screenplay, The King’s Speech, wasn’t even nominated at the WGA because it was ineligible.
PGA Awards Film: Best Picture List Offers No Surprises But Could Have Strong Influence On Oscar
In an intriguing move, the Producers Guild of America decided suddenly to move its annual PGA Awards
nomination announcement up a day and put out the list shortly after 2 PM PT this afternoon — instead of the originally scheduled time tomorrow. Whatever the reason for jumping the gun, it could impact the Oscar race as the Academy extended its own voting period 24 hours to a 5 PM deadline Friday instead of Thursday, as originally planned, and the PGA choices could be influential for last-minute Oscar voters rushing to see everything and get their ballots in. In the new world of online voting for the Academy, this two-day window could be important, and I will bet the PGA was aware of that when they decided to unleash their choices today.
Related: PGA Awards Nominations Announced
If that’s the case, the PGA’s 10 nominations for Best Picture — or as the guild calls it, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures — provided no real surprises. All 10 picks — Argo, Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life Of Pi, Lincoln, Moonrise Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty — are the most likely contenders to score at the Oscars according to most prognosticator predictions. It’s particularly good news for Quentin Tarantino’s bloody and controversial Django Unchained, as the film was one of the last to be screened in 2012 and was the only one that reportedly did not benefit by having a screener sent to the PGA membership, the reason widely blamed for its AWOL status in the SAG Awards nominations announced in mid-December.
One film left off, Sony Pictures Classics’ Amour, is not a shocker since smaller foreign-language entries rarely make the PGA list. It would seem the most likely to replace one of the PGA nominees when the Oscar list is announced January 10. Other films missing from the list like Flight, The Impossible and The Master have seen momentum stalled with poor showings in critics and other precursor awards. The only slight surprise for me was the omission of big moneymaker The Dark Knight Rises since the PGA, being producers after all, do like to reward financial bonanzas and the film was the last of Christopher Nolan’s enormously profitable and critically acclaimed Batman trilogy for Warner Bros. The PGA also had previously nominated 2008′s The Dark Knight for their top honor even when the group had only five nominations; Oscar failed to follow suit and passed it by for a Best Pic nod that year. The move prompted the Academy to move to 10 nominations the next year to (hopefully) include more popular films in their Best Picture lineup. Read More »
OSCARS: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Gives Sony Early Awards Heat, But Will It Last?
With its one-two punch now of Best Film and Best Director wins from the first two voting bodies on the so-called critics
awards circuit — the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review — Sony‘s Zero Dark Thirty directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal is establishing itself as a powerful and promising early force in the race and only stands to add to the total as a tsunami of critics awards are unleashed over the next couple of weeks (including LA, Boston, etc, later this week). In many recent years critics groups have tended to follow each other like lemmings, and sometimes — especially if it is a nearly unanimous choice like Bigelow and Boal’s The Hurt Locker in 2009 (although NBR virtually ignored that one) – it can definitely have an impact on Oscar voters. Academy voters at the very least will be rushing this year to see everything they think they should see in time for the earlier voting period starting December 17 through the holidays to January 3rd. Big early wins like this won’t go unnoticed.
Related: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Debuts: Can It Overcome Controversy To Wow Oscar Voters?
Of course there can also be a great divide as we saw in 2010, when critics groups (including NYFCC and NBR) almost in lockstep chose Sony’s The Social Network right through to its victory at the Golden Globes (the HFPA often likes to go with a perceived winner). That film was then completely upended at the Producers Guild and subsequent industry awards by upstart The King’s Speech, which of course went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Tom Hooper.
Related: Deadline Awards Watch With Pete Hammond, Episode 3
Although Sony should be feeling very good about the way things are going right now, this studio which had high hopes based on that torrent of critics awards for Social Network was obviously none too happy as that season played out the way it did — especially since it looked so good in December and most of January. My guess is with that in mind they are going to grab this early momentum for Zero Dark Thirty and run with it. It recently hired Michael Kupferberg of Strategy PR as a consultant. Isn’t it ironic that again one of their major competitors is a Hooper film, Universal’s Les Miserables. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate Sony bummer if he were able to come along and again rain on the studio’s parade when the guild shows roll around? Read More »
Oscars: Universal Unveils ‘Les Miserables’ in NY And LA To Huge Reaction; First Hugh Jackman Interview: “A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity”
Awards strategists for other horses in the ever-tightening race for Best Picture may not want to hear this but Universal Pictures today may have unleashed
the 800-pound-gorilla in the Oscar race. That is, if initial reaction to today’s launch of the much-awaited movie version of the celebrated musical Les Miserables is any indication. Screenings at Alice Tully Hall in New York along with a smaller invite-only unveiling for about 100 people at the 1000-seat Samuel Goldwyn Theatre at The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills both elicited immediate Oscar talk. Les Mis, one of the few remaining unseen contenders, is now fully in the conversation for real, if not quickly vaunting near or to the top of Best Picture favorites (along with Argo, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Life Of Pi).
Related: ‘Life Of Pi’ Sales into Oscar Race; Ang Lee Interview, Featurette
Almost immediately after the Academy screening this afternoon I got on the phone with star Hugh Jackman in Australia. Shortly afterward its Oscar winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) called me as the second of the NY screenings was taking place (we could both hear the applause in the background). Both seemed relieved to have the film, which opens Christmas Day, finally in the race. Universal is wasting no time as Hooper heads to Los Angeles on Saturday to participate in six, count ‘em, six screenings for Guild and … Read More »
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