Awards season is upon us and movie studios big and small are stumping for Oscar nominations. A lot you out there may not be aware of how the whole Oscar things work so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown. Before the movies that make up the official selections happen studios will stump (campaign for) their best films. More often than not this takes the form of public and private pitches showing the merits of ones work.
You’ll see movies that may have come out earlier in the year get television commercials praising the film and giving stats on different aspects. This does two things: First it lets people know that the DVD/Blu-Ray is coming out, and secondly it gets the attention of academy members that may have forgotten about a film that came out before the holidays.
Or you can always go the other route and just be a Weinstein Company film and win everything regardless. What makes this interesting is that studios usually pick the best and brightest for these consideration stumps. If you remember some time back the commercials for the Dark Knight Rises around this time of year were stumping for Michael Cain as best supporting actor.
Now The Dark Knight Rises was an excellent film and because of the prestige of the series stumping for the excellent Cain made logical sense to most people. Unfortunately this time around Paramount Studios has decided to pluck Transformers Age of Extinction for their stumping honors. The studio has the balls to ask for Best Picture & Best Director Oscar nominations among others. Seriously, just take a lot at the official pitch:
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