Universal PicturesSo, if Johnny Depp finally wins his Oscar next year, is he going to thank the Academy for pushing the ceremony to March? If Leonardo DiCaprio loses, is he going wish the shot clock had run out faster?
Let's put it this way, either star wouldn't be the first to think the calendar saved him—or sunk him.
"That happens all the time," says Tony Angelotti, an Oscar consultant who works with Universal Pictures and Disney/Pixar.
Oscar's move to the first Sunday in March for the 2010 ceremony, however, may add some new wrinkles to Hollywood's conspicuously smooth brow.
"You could argue it would give the audience much more time to catch up with all the movies," says Christine Birch, president of marketing for DreamWorks, "[but] from a marketing aspect, that's money you have to spend."
Not to mention theaters you have to keep stocked with your Oscar releases, rather than your freshest produce. Or high-profit-margin comedies, whichever the case may be.
Neither Angelotti nor Birch could talk specifically about campaigns they might be mounting. Universal's the studio behind Depp and Christian Bale's Public Enemies, the gangster epic due out in the summer. Disney/Pixar's Up is opening the Cannes film festival. DreamWorks' slate includes Monsters vs. Aliens, another potential Best Animated Feature candidate, which opened Friday.
Other upcoming films commonly cited as having that famous Oscar buzz include Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, starring DiCaprio, Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones and the all-star musical Nine.
Of those, only The Lovely Bones is set to open in December. Birch thinks that month could get crowded if studios seek to shorten the lag time between a release and the Oscars. And Angelotti thinks late December could become a dangerous time for, as he puts it, "a film that doesn't measure up all the way around but has a certain patina to it."
Translation: Since balloting has been extended along with next year's ceremony, year-end-debuting movies may be less likely to get by on their reputations alone.
To Angelotti, who's also an Academy member, the longer voting time is, he says, "the best news of all."
Well, besides being told you've won the Oscar. Finally.
Calendar Check: The Oscars, set for March 7, will be held 13 days later than this year's Feb. 22 ceremony, which was the earliest-occurring show ever. From the 1940s through 2004, when February became the thing, the ceremony routinely was held in late March or April.
Faster, Higher, Uh-Oh…: The 2006 Oscars likewise was moved to the first Sunday in March to avoid an Olympic collision. For its trouble, the Jon Stewart-hosted show ended up losing 3 million viewers from the previous year.
What About the Golden Globes? Will the Oscars inspire the Hollywood Foreign Press to move its party out of its early January slot? Don't know. No date has yet been confirmed.
Last Word: Dale Olson, a publicist who's worked on Oscar campaigns going back to In the Heat of the Night, loves the new March date and doesn't think it's going to alter the campaign season one bit. "Everybody knows that they're going to do," Olson says. "Everybody knows right now."