Hollywood’s Quality Glut

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As the home stretch of the movie year arrives, Hollywood has rarely been more in need of a holiday pick-me-up, the Wall Street Journal reports.


Film and TV screenwriters may be about to go on strike after months of bitter, fruitless negotiations. And a fall movie season that was supposed to deliver both healthy box-office returns and a pack of Oscar contenders has fallen short on both counts.


That’s why a lot is on the line as the holiday film season arrives today with a big one-two punch: the Denzel Washington-Russell Crowe epic “American Gangster” and Jerry Seinfeld’s animated “Bee Movie.” Hollywood is eager to restart a selling engine that stalled out around the middle of the summer with tepid performers like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” remake, “The Invasion,” and never got back on track. And the Academy Awards race, which usually has produced one or two sure bets for Best Picture by now, is instead wide open.

The scramble for both commercial and Oscar gold will proceed on two fronts, with a handful of films seeking to prove themselves in both categories.


In the prestige department, producers and executives at studios’ specialty arms say that this holiday season is more packed with award-seeking fare than usual. The slate includes not just big-name dramas like “Gangster,” but also several films with literary pedigrees (“The Kite Runner” and “Atonement”) and the latest offerings from major filmmakers like Mike Nichols (“Charlie Wilson’s War”), Joel and Ethan Coen (“No Country for Old Men”) and Francis Ford Coppola (“Youth Without Youth”).


“There definitely isn’t a front-runner,” says Miramax Films President Daniel Battsek of the awards race. “That’s a good thing, and it also makes us that much twitchier.” Miramax will release the Coen brothers picture domestically on Nov. 9.



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