Oscar's Ground Game of Retail Politics
Strategists' campaign roadmap? Regional festivals (hello, Middleburg!), social issues, and then, of course, the Governors Awards. Plus: The Zendaya question
On Monday, A24 sent out a press release with truly excellent news: JJ Velazquez, one of the many formerly incarcerated performers in its summer release Sing Sing, had been exonerated for his wrongful murder conviction. Velazquez served nearly 24 years at Sing Sing prison in Ossining, N.Y., before being released in 2021 under an executive clemency; in the film he draws on his own experience to play one of the members of Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) theater program.
For years, Velazquez has been a criminal justice reform advocate in addition to fighting for his own exoneration — in 2022, President Biden apologized to him during a public forum. He’s also been a key element of Sing Sing’s awards campaign, walking the red carpet at the film’s SXSW and TIFF premieres — and a stop at the San Quentin Film Festival is scheduled for next week.
This enormous victory for Velazquez is also, in a much smaller way, a victory for the movie Sing Sing, too. Every awards campaign, after all, wants its film to have some kind of real-life relevance. During the Harvey Weinstein era, most of his contenders would try to break through to be part of a conversation beyond The Hollywood bubble — thus conveying “significance” — from getting the Rev. Jesse Jackson to praise Chocolat in an ad, to actually bringing Philomena Lee to testify before Congress during the Philomena campaign.
These days, the push for larger cultural relevance is subtler, but it’s still there. CODA star Marlee Matlin was front and center in that film’s 2021 campaign, praising director Sian Heder’s commitment to the deaf community and reflecting on how far the industry had come since her Oscar win for 1986’s Children of a Lesser God. For The Whale two years ago, A24 partnered with the Obesity Action Coalition, which hosted a roundtable conversation with Brendan Fraser at the height of the film’s awards campaign. Before winning best picture for Everything Everywhere All At Once, producer Jonathan Wang said he hoped the film could speak to “the immigrant experience writ large.”
In sharing the news of Velazquez’s exoneration, A24 included details about the film’s unique financial structure, which gave each member of the cast and crew equity in the film and also paid them the same rate. The studio is clearly aware that having Velazquez and his story in the news boosts the film’s prospects. At the same time, pushing too hard could risk trivializing the real stories at the heart of the film.
So what else can you do to keep your spring or summer release top of mind for voters who will be distracted by dozens of other movies between now and the end of the year? I spoke to some strategists who shared their secrets — and how hard they have to work just to get people to see even the most enormous awards contenders.
Meeting and Greeting
Let’s start with Sing Sing, which is also deploying one of the tactics multiple strategists told me about: regional festivals and their associated awards. Sing Sing star Colman Domingo is scheduled to receive awards at festivals in both Savannah and Newport Beach, while Clarence Maclin, who co-wrote the script based on his own experiences in RTA and plays himself in the film, will receive a breakthrough performer award in the Hamptons. Domingo and Maclin will both be in Middleburg, Va. for its festival, accepting the Impact Award.
These tribute awards are usually paired with a screening, creating a priceless opportunity for voters at these festivals — even if there’s just a handful of them — to engage with the films and the people behind it up close. “The goal is to get people there so they can mingle with the voters,” one awards strategist tells me. “People will see it and not really get it, and then talk to the directors and say, ‘Oh my god, it makes so much sense now.’”
Domingo is already a proven talent at this kind of retail politics, having pounded the pavement for Rustin last season with his good humor, excellent fashion sense and innate gravitas drawing attention everywhere he went — and he ultimately earned a best actor nomination. Maclin, meanwhile, has an irresistible breakthrough story, making his film acting debut in a story based on his time in Sing Sing. It’s hard to imagine anyone seeing the film and not being instantly eager to talk to Maclin about it — and Velazquez, too, who will be joining him for the Hamptons Q&A.
The Newport Beach festival, which kicks off Oct. 17, will be a stop for several other contenders from films that have already had their theatrical moment. The 93-year-old June Squibb, a dark horse best actress contender for Thelma, will be there to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Didi star Joan Chen will receive a Career Achievement Award — yes, those are two separate awards. Nicolas Cage will be representing one of the summer’s biggest hits, Neon’s Longlegs, when he accepts the festival’s Icon Award, a canny effort to reposition Cage’s menacing performance as awards-worthy.
Sometimes a festival award can tell you something about the limits of a film’s campaign as well. I’m a huge fan of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, which debuted on Netflix in May and, for my money, is the true breakthrough Glen Powell performance of the year (sorry Twisters, I still love you too). But the breezy and funny Hit Man is challenging to present as an across-the-board awards contender, even if a lead actor in a comedy Golden Globe nomination for Powell ought to be a slam dunk.
Could Linklater, a three-time best original screenplay nominee, be a contender for his writing? The Lifetime Achievement in Screenwriting Award he’ll be accepting in Savannah seems to suggest he could. And for what it’s worth, Powell co-wrote the script, so that would put him in the mix as well.
The Zendaya Question
Two of the biggest early-year releases still lingering over the Oscar race don’t factor into any of these festival plans — and both happen to star the most famous woman under the age of 30.
For Dune: Part Two, the awards season playbook is already written by its six-Oscar-winning predecessor Dune, with one major exception. The 2021 Dune was an October release, marching through a still Covid-restricted awards season with the wind of its box office support behind it. Dune: Part Two came out in February, and now must find a way to pop back up for awards season before voters forget its spectacle.
They’re already off to a good start, bringing stars Timothée Chalamet, Austin Butler and Zendaya to New York for a screening and Q&A in early September, shortly after both Dunes screened at the Toronto International Film Festival with director Denis Villeneuve in attendance. It might not be easy to get all the actors back together again, but Dune: Part Two boasts a huge number of craftspeople, many of whom won Oscars for the first film. As another strategist pointed out to me, a sound editor or costume designer who may not be a household name could be a huge deal in a room filled with voters from their Academy branch.
But hasn’t everyone already seen Dune: Part Two? After all, it grossed $710 million globally and $282 million domestic. Every strategist I spoke to emphasized just how often they’re getting audience members at screenings who are seeing the film for the first time, even for juggernauts like Barbie or Top Gun: Maverick. If you’re Dune, you really want them having that first experience on the big screen.
The Zendaya vehicle that remains the biggest question mark for me is Challengers, a modest box office hit ($50 million U.S., $93 million global) and genuine pop culture sensation from the spring that, as I discussed on the podcast with Sean Fennessey a few weeks back, could theoretically follow the Everything Everywhere All at Once path from springtime success to Oscar glory. But for now, that’s still just a theory.
The first hurdle is the one that faces any campaign: getting the talent back out there. Mike Faist is reportedly filming the new East of Eden limited series with Florence Pugh in New Zealand, while Josh O’Connor has committed to Kelly Reichardt’s next film — and Zendaya remains as in demand as anyone on earth. I probably don’t need to tell you how much easier it might be to get voters out to a screening of Challengers if any of these incredibly attractive stars were in attendance.
Usually a film in this situation would rely instead on its director and craftspeople, but Challengers faces the distinct challenge of Queer, the other Luca Guadagnino film. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, editor Marco Costa and costume designer Jonathan Anderson all worked on both films.
I know the awards teams behind MGM’s Challengers and A24’s Queer have been in contact, but there’s no clear sense of how they’ll navigate this much overlap, or which film might emerge as a priority. Both studios, after all, have other titles that need their attention. MGM just earned raves for Nickel Boys at the New York Film Festival, while A24 has Sing Sing, The Brutalist, Babygirl and other contenders to manage.
The answer to this question and many others may arrive on Nov. 17, when the Academy hosts its annual Governors Awards in Hollywood. None of this year’s awards contenders will be giving acceptance speeches — that duty falls on the actual honorees — but every insider I spoke to confirmed they’ll be bringing as many of their hopefuls as they possibly can.
“The Governors Awards is a huge campaign stop,” the awards strategist told me. “Everyone is looking at the talent that’s there, in terms of what the studios are pushing.”
I’ll be there too, keeping a close eye not only on who attends, but who the room flocks toward. It was only when the casts of Parasite, CODA and Everything Everywhere All at Once started traveling en masse to events like that that their best picture victories started to come into focus.
Until then, it’s all about the regional festivals — so if you see someone getting a whole lot of attention near you, let me know.