While the Oscar season is once again coming up fast, we’ve yet to slide the delta variant and its many concerns into the rearview mirror. While last year’s need to swiftly adapt the Academy Award season to a world gone abruptly digital may have been slightly rushed, this year the Academy goes into planning a hybrid awards season with a wealth of experience. As the Emmy votes wrap up and Oscar season kicks off, we see the launch of the Academy Screening Room to help voters choose their picks. One of the best entertainment lawyers in Los Angeles and Oscar’s expert, Brandon Blake, lets us in on the details.
To the surprise of no one who weathered the shaky waters of 2020 and 2021 with us, the first 4 films to have their moment in the bright lights of the brand-new screening room are all from streamers. Namely:
- Netflix’s The Mitchells Vs The Machines
- Amazon’s Anette
- The Tomorrow War(also an Amazon title), and
- Coming 2 America (Again for Amazon, directly from Paramount)
This makes this year’s Oscar season the first to skip physical screeners altogether. Anyone looking to enjoy the AMPAS contenders for this year will have to head over to the digital screening room to take them in. It’s a feature of last year’s Oscar season that was well-received among Academy voters, and it nets the Academy at least $12500 (as of last season) per title from studios and distributors, too, so it’s easy to see why it looks set to become an integral part of the Oscar hype train going forward.
Where to from here for the digital screening room? Documentary contenders, which will not have entry charges, will be shown in a different section. Likewise, International Feature entries and special sections will be expanded on as the season heats up. We will, as always, be keeping a careful eye on developments as we get nearer to crunch time.
Film and Television 