degrassifan said: "Respectfully Jeffrey Karasarides, I remember you stating several times on here and on Gold Derby that you didn’t think West Side Story would be an awards player in the Oscar race, and that ended up getting 7 noms, including Best Picture."
The difference there is that on paper, it looked like West Side Story would have a huge uphill battle to climb given that a number of people were probably going to view it as "a remake of a much lauded Best Picture winner that swept the Oscars." Although it had Steven Spielberg at the helm, who's been a presence at the Academy for decades. While the film itself did get those nominations, it ultimately wasn't taken seriously for a Best Picture win for three reasons:
1. It missed out on noms for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. While the former shouldn't have been that surprising given the writers branch's long love/hate relationship with musicals, Tony Kushner still got all this acclaim for his reworking of the story. Although I did see somewhere that the only times in recent years where musicals did receive screenplay bids was when they were big threats to win Best Picture (as was the case with Chicago and La La Land). Meanwhile, other musicals nominated for Best Picture within this century such as Moulin Rouge! and Les Misérables weren't recognized for their scripts. Plus, the editing snub was also telling given that Spielberg's longtime editor, Michael Kahn, is a legend who's managed to win three times out of eight nominations.
2. Similar to how 2018's A Star is Born and 2019's Little Women were treated, the Academy by and large appeared to have respected it, but still felt "Why are we doing this again?."
3. After scoring big at the Oscars with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, the Academy continues to show respect for Spielberg, but haven't really had much of a desire to award him again. Similar to what's been happening to Martin Scorsese after he finally won for The Departed, they've pretty much taken him for granted at this point.
"We’ll just have to see. Wicked has the ingredients of being an Oscar contender. We just need to see if those ingredients came together well. I have it on good authority that Universal is going to do a big awards push. The only thing hurting its chances is the fact it’s been split into two movies."
What ingredients? I can't think of a single Best Picture nominee in recent years that proves Wicked could get nominated. Sure, the Academy has become more open to recognizing populist films lately, but some of them were considered too big to ignore when it came to their box office successes (as was the case with Black Panther, Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbie). The latter of which also had Greta Gerwig at the helm, who's been on quite a streak with her directorial outings reaping Best Picture noms. Jon M. Chu has never even made a movie that was Oscar nominated in a single category before. Doesn't mean he never will, it's just something worth taking into account.
I'll be shocked if Wicked makes a billion at the box office. At best, I see this doing similar to Wonka last year. A big family friendly musical inspired by a beloved family friendly property released during the holiday season, makes a lot of money, but is never considered a big deal in the awards conversation. I think Wicked's awards potential is only bids in the below-the-line categories and nothing else.
Updated On: 9/23/24 at 07:36 AM
