MADness—the Blog

Hollywood studios don’t make movies anymore.  They distribute them.  That is, they sell movies, they market movies, they release movies—and there are few things that matter as much to the studios as when a movie is released.  Take Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  (Please!)  DreamWorks, Paramount, Universal, and others, teamed up for the worldwide distribution, and you can bet they had countless meetings before agreeing on a schedule.  The U.S. release date was June 24.  That makes sense.  The beginning of summer, kids are out of school—it’s a good time for popcorn.

A June date for any movie usually means that Academy Award considerations were not part of the calculation.  Everybody knows that Oscar-worthy films are released late in the year.  But what’s interesting this year is that one of the films getting lots of Oscar buzz was released the same week as the Transformers sequel—The Hurt Locker. 

The Hurt Locker was released by Summit Entertainment, a relative newcomer to the distribution business.  Did the company not think the movie had Oscar potential?  Or did it think that the famously short memories of Academy voters was a Hollywood legend not to be taken seriously?

Ten films will get Best Picture nominations this year.  In nine days we’ll know what they are.  Of the films likely to be among the chosen, all but a handful were released after Labor Day.

Up—May 29
The Hurt Locker—Jun. 26
Julie & Julia—Aug. 7
Inglourious Basterds—Aug. 21
A Serious Man—Oct. 2
An Education—Oct. 16
Where the Wild Things Are—Oct. 16
Precious—Nov. 6
Fantastic Mr. Fox—Nov. 13
The Blind Side—Nov. 20
A Single Man—Dec. 11
Invictus—Dec. 11
Crazy Heart—Dec. 16
Avatar—Dec. 18
Nine—Dec. 18
Up in the Air—Dec. 23

Do Oscar voters really have short memories?  It’s hard to tell, since studios usually hold their best stuff till late in the fall.  It’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In any case, over the past couple of decades, only four films released during the first half of the year won the big prize.

1990  Dances with Wolves—Nov. 9
1991  The Silence of the Lambs—Feb. 14
1992  Unforgiven—Aug. 7
1993  Schindler’s List—Dec. 15
1994  Forrest Gump—Jul. 6
1995  Braveheart—May 24
1996  The English Patient—Nov. 15
1997  Titanic—Dec. 19
1998  Shakespeare in Love—Dec. 11
1999  American Beauty—Oct. 1
2000  Gladiator—May 5
2001  A Beautiful Mind—Dec. 21
2002  Chicago—Dec. 27
2003  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King—Dec. 17
2004  Million Dollar Baby—Dec. 15
2005  Crash—May 6
2006  The Departed—Oct. 6
2007  No Country for Old Men—Nov. 9
2008  Slumdog Millionaire—Nov. 12