AWAAAAAAAAAAARDS SEEEEEEEEAAAAAASON!
Yes, Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions have announced the most predictable release date imaginable for Wonderstruck, the latest from Todd “Quite Possibly Our Finest Working Filmmaker” Haynes: right in that sweet spot where Best Picture winners keep landing. Variety reports that Haynes’s Carol follow-up will hit theaters in limited release on October 20, and will go wide in mid-November. Hey, just for funsies, when did the last five Academy Award winners for Best Picture slide into limited release?
- Moonlight: October 21
- Spotlight: November 6
- Birdman: October 17
- 12 Years a Slave: October 18
- Argo: October 12
(There’s this weird accepted wisdom among distributors and studios that you put out your serious Oscar contenders as close to the end of the year as possible, since Academy voters have the collective memory of a fruit fly, but the last Best Picture winner to hit theaters in December was Million Dollar Baby, in 20-frickin-04.)
It’s not like this one wasn’t already among our most anticipated movies of the year: it is, again, a new Todd Haynes movie, based on a book by Brian Selznick (whose work also inspired Hugo, Scorsese’s most unexpectedly delightful picture in recent memory). It’s also his fourth collaboration with Julianne Moore.
Wonderstruck will premiere later this month at the Cannes Film Festival, so you know what that means: this year, awards season starts in May! (Jumps out of fifth-floor window.) And who knows, maybe this year, his masterpiece won’t get screwed.