The Oscar nominations have finally been announced this week, and save for a few surprising omissions, the list is pretty much as everyone expected it to be. We’re not here to discuss the potential award winners – we’ve had enough speculation these last couple of months, and we’ve only got a month and a bit to see who these will actually be. Why so late, you wonder? Well, that’s one of our five points for this weekly post, so do read ahead if you want to find out!
1. A very late award ceremony
The Academy Award ceremony usually takes place in mid-February. However, the set date for this year’s edition is 4 March 2018, more than two weeks later than the usual time. This has been done in order to avoid broadcasting conflicts with the 2018 Winter Olympics, which will take place in South Korea between 9 and 25 February 2018.
2. The Return of Kimmel
What do the 2017 and 2018 editions have in common? Well, one noticeable element is that they share the same presenter – Jimmy Kimmel. He is the first presenter to reprise his role in consecutive years since Billy Crystal in the 1997 and 1998 editions. It seems to be a once-in-twenty-years thing. Which means that the same might happen for the 2037 and 2038 editions. Wild guess about who the presenter might be then? Oh, let’s not forget that Michael de Luca and Jennifer Todd will also reprise their roles as producers for this edition – they are most recently known for what will always be known as ‘The La La Land Fuckup’, so it should be a fun and unpredictable watch, for sure!
3. A few rare records
We’ve also got some notable statistics to talk about. ‘Get Out’ became the first horror film to be nominated for the Best Picture category since ‘The Sixth Sense‘ in 2000. ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri‘ is the first film since ‘Bugsy‘ in 1992 to receive two nominations in the supporting actor category (now Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson, then Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley). Kobe Bryant is the first NBA player in the history of the awards to receive a nomination.
4. How the average box office revenue fared
This year we have nine Best Picture nominees, which at the time of writing had grossed approximately $570 million, an average of $63 million per film. ‘Dunkirk‘ amounts to more than a third of this total sum, while ‘Phantom Thread‘ has the lowest earnings, just over $6 million.
5. A rare hoodoo is to be broken
The overwhelming favourites to win Best Pictures are two: Martin McDonagh’s ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri‘ and Guillermo del Toro’s ‘The Shape of Water‘. In case the former prevails, it will join a select list of only three films so far to have won the big prize without having been nominated for Best Director (the major and inexplicable snub of the nominations). The last one was Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo‘. If the latter title wins, it will be the first December release to take home the great award in 13 years, since Clint Eastwood’s ‘Million Dollar Baby‘.
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