Understanding the film business / Awards

[jo]

Excellent and insightful article on Fox Filmed Entertainment Chairman Jim Gianopulos --

variety.com/2014/film/news/20th-century-fox-jim-gianopulos-1201285695/

*The globalization of the film business
*Threats to the film business, including those presented by technology
*Forging into the future of the business
*Leadership and Management style of Jim Gianopulos
*Relationships with creative talent, including impressions by Hugh Jackman
*Gianopulos's private side

Re Hugh comments --

Hugh Jackman, who soared to stardom playing Wolverine in Fox’s “X-Men” franchise, says international audiences have always been important to Gianopulos. He remembers smoking a cigar with the studio chief in producer Lauren Shuler Donner’s backyard right after the first “X-Men” came out.

“He told me that careers go through peaks and troughs, so it’s important for an actor to be mindful of their international profile,” recalls Jackman. “He said there have been actors who may no longer pop in America, but who have a big enough international profile to still get movies made. I’ve always been mindful to promote my movies globally.”

Hugh has always been seen as very hardworking when it comes to promoting the international side during film releases. Also, his solo film The Wolverine rested not only on his name for solo top casting, but was among international hits which developed a foreign-based story, with an international cast. Plus Hugh's deft understanding of how social media works ( as well as his intuitive background of mass communications), a phenomenon which knows no boundaries ( nationality or demographics) has parlayed his image into more of a universally-recognized and well-admired actor! He probably also appreciates how technology and the internet have made international audiences well-aware of his career directions and activities.

Look at how he is drawing attention to the movie PAN ( which is a publicity-shy film project supposedly by Joe Wright's wishes) and at his own participation in the movie


Hugh has worked with Jim Gianopulos together in philantrophic work for the Motion Pictures and Television Fund, with their annual benefit work called A FINE ROMANCE. Last year, it featured the reprise of Hugh's one-man show called One Night Only, at Los Angeles on Hugh's birthday.

Also, when Hugh's Walk of Fame ceremonies were timed close to the release of Les Miserables, the ceremonies were attended not only by the Universal head and some Les Mis friends, but also by the presence of Jim Gianopulos who brought along Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks Animation. It is very rare to see studio heads at such kind of ceremonies honoring a film star.


Jim Gianopulos's strength in international distribution has been parlayed into understanding what the film business has in store for the future. The film business has changed in terms of emphasis ( in its ultimate goal of seeking profitability in such a diverse environment) but he seemed to have thrived and has steered FOX through some difficult times.

[jo]

Interesting discussion of how Hollywood might have lost its way...and why Broadway may have overtaken it in terms of entertainment appeal --

t.news.ph.msn.com/top-stories/broadway-outshines-hollywood-on-and-off-screen-5

Broadway outshines Hollywood on and off screen


By Agence France-Presse


The age-old rivalry between Broadway and Hollywood took centre stage at this year's Venice film festival, which winds up on Saturday, with a host of theatre-based tales and stars denouncing a declining Silver Screen industry.


"Hollywood's gone in the wrong direction," master of screwball comedy Peter Bogdanovich said ahead of the premier of his delicious theatre-based comedy "She's Funny That Way", starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.

"They're making prequels and sequels and cartoons. The great days of Hollywood aren't with us anymore, we're in a period of decadence," he said.

This summer Hollywood faced its worst blockbuster season since 1997, with X-Men, Transformers and even Spiderman failing to hit the spot and summer sales hitting just $4.05 billion (3.08 billion euros), down 15 percent from the previous year, according to movie sales-tracker Rentrak.

Broadway revenue and attendance figures meanwhile were on the up -- with box offices reporting a record total gross of $1.27 billion, up 11 percent from the previous season.

It's a dynamic reflected in the repeated odes to Broadway in the Venice line-up and the red-carpet sentiment that Hollywood has lost its way.


- 'Awards for cartoons and porn' -


Among the most acclaimed turns at the 71st edition of the festival were performances from Al Pacino and Michael Keaton, both playing actors facing existential crises that haunt them in dressing room mirrors and spill over on to the Broadway stage, while Owen Wilson offered a gleeful appearance as a theatre director.

In Barry Levinson’s "The Humbling", Pacino's character Simon Axler battles with his inner demons in a staging of Shakespeare's "As You Like It", while Keaton's character suffers a similar crisis of faith in Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Birdman", in which he struggles to step away from a blockbuster franchise by putting on a Broadway play.

Keaton may have Tim Burton's "Batman" to thank for his stellar rise in real life, but Inarritu has the spiteful New York Times critic in "Birdman" deride his character as representing a world in which "young spoilt children give each other awards for cartoons and porn."

Pacino, in Venice for both "The Humbling" and in-competition flick "Manglehorn", told journalists that "in the old days, the people who started Hollywood exchanged ideas."

"Now it's changed, they can't afford to do any of the movies we do anymore, the smaller movies. Billions have to be spent," said "The Godfather" star.

Unlike last year, when the festival opened with 3D space giant "Gravity", starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, this year there has been barely a nod to special effects.

Swedish director Roy Andersson pared his film "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" down even further than most, presenting a series of sketches in which furniture is minimal and props limited to the odd briefcase.

Alongside its homage to theatre, the world's oldest festival also spotlighted the growing market for high-quality television mini-series, screening the premier of HBO's "Olive Kitteridge" starring Frances McDormand, a long-time collaborator with the Coen brothers.

The series' director Lisa Cholodenko said that while "there's an inherent restriction in big-buck cinema because it has to appeal to the biggest audience possible," television is living "a golden age, changing every minute."

"Every season there are more and more channels -- Sundance, Netflix, Amazon -- moving into production, it's kind of the Wild West. You can be as adventurous or subversive as you want to be," she said.

[jo]

Do superhero movies have a SELL BY DATE ?

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/10/21/the-superhero-bubble-is-destined-to-burst-is-warner-brothers-making-a-mistake/

Decades from now, cinephiles will look back on the early 2000s as the Superhero Era — and they’ll be able to pinpoint the moment when the bubble burst. As with all trends, it’s only a matter of time. It happened with film noir and then westerns, it happened to the spy movies of the 1960s, and then to the gritty crime dramas of the ’70s...

I think the point missed by most who predict the eventual death of superhero movies or any other genres that appeal to the young generations ( from young tots who watch animation on TV and graduate to moviehouse animations, to teeners who adore superheroes -- is that every year new members of these age groups come up and develop interest in this kind of cinematic stories...and every year and thereafter the cycle keeps getting repeated. So long as there are new children and new teenagers - entertainment that cater to them ( whether comic books, computer games, or blockbuster movies) will always have high demand.

Unlike film noir, westerns, spy movies, and gritty crime dramas -- they mostly appeal(ed) to the mature generations who might get tired of them eventually.

This  seems also to be the reason why stage musicals like the Disney musicals, Lion King and Wicked will likely never run out of audiences! Every year new children and new female teenagers simply grow up to that demographic age profile... and when they grow older, they are replaced by a new batch!

As for the way of delivering the entertainment they prefer - over the years, it will probably be repackaged ( such as team ensembles rather than solo heroes) to appeal fresh and new! These are also techie-savvy generations and so there are many possibilities to enhance the appeal of the forms of entertainment.

C'est la "circle of life" ( aka Lion King's main solo)


Jo

[jo]

Another article bemoaning the rise of blockbusters - from the OP/Ed page of the NYTimes !

op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/are-blockbusters-destroying-the-movies/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

Are Blockbusters Destroying the Movies?


By John Guida
January 6, 2015 10:30 am January 6, 2015 10:30 am 3 Comments



It’s red-carpet season in Hollywood, rolling on until the Academy Awards, an abundance of trophies and best-of lists.

But for many observers, it’s also a time to take a look at the state of the industry. And for some of them, the view is more dreary than award-worthy.

“We’re on the edge of something,” writes Mark Harris at Grantland, “and the something is big and dark and annihilating.”

For Mr. Harris, movies have been captured by a business model that relies on blockbusters — especially sequels and franchises.

But in 2014, “franchises are not a big part of the movie business,” he says. “They are not the biggest part of the movie business. They are the movie business. Period.”

His remarks echo similar warnings more than a year ago from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Mr. Spielberg predicted an “implosion” in the film industry if numerous megabudget movies flopped.

The movie business has followed what Anita Elberse, a professor at the Harvard Business School, calls the “blockbuster trap.” It involves film studios — and content producers in the world of entertainment in general, like record labels and TV networks — pouring enormous resources (often tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars) into what they see as the most likely profit makers (blockbusters, also called tentpoles).

Though she calls it a trap, she defends the practice as sound business strategy. In a 2013 article for New York magazine (as well as in her book “Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking and the Big Business of Entertainment”), she writes, “the truth of the matter is that there’s generally a clear reason why studio heads do what they do — they are, in fact, very focused on reducing risk.”

“Hollywood would be in much bigger trouble if its executives consistently walked away from making such large bets,” she added. “And that would be bad news not just for those of us who can’t get enough of Channing Tatum and Ryan Reynolds, but for everyone who loves film.”

For Mr. Harris, though, the blockbuster strategy is strangling film art. His view falls on the slate of blockbusters in the next few years, including 32 DC and Marvel comic-book movies (for example, in 2015, “Ant-Man” and “The Fanstic Four”) and dozens of other sequels and franchises (in 2015, “Taken 3” and “Hot Tub Time Machine 2”). That lineup, he says, “feels somehow small and cautious.”

“Almost everything else that comes out of Hollywood,” he writes, “is either an accident, a penance (people who run the studios do like to have a reason to go to the Oscars), a modestly budgeted bone thrown to an audience perceived as niche (black people, women, adults), an appeasement (movie stars are still important and they must occasionally be placated with something interesting to do so they’ll be cooperative about doing the big stuff), or a necessity (sometimes, unfortunately, it is required that a studio take a chance on something new in order to initiate a franchise). A successful franchise is no longer used to finance the rest of a studio’s lineup; a studio’s lineup is brands and franchises, and that’s it.”

But the writer David Poland, at his Hot Blog for Movie City News, has heard all this before. In his post “The Sky Continues Not to Fall,” he brushes off the argument that movies are in any kind of crisis, economic or aesthetic.

He acknowledges the “proliferation of the mega-budget.” But “they are still making the other films,” he writes. “And they are making them for more than they were in the DVD era.”

Outside of Disney, which Mr. Harris singles out for its particular zeal for “branded” movies, Mr. Poland says that studios offer “more balance than people think.” This year, he cites “Lucy,” “Neighbors,” “Fury,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and others as evidence.

Mr. Harris does not dispute that good movies “sprout up, inevitably, in the cracks and seams between the tectonic plates on which all of these franchises stay balanced.”

“But we don’t see what we don’t see,” he says. “We don’t see the effort, or the cost of the effort, or the movies of which we’re deprived because of the cost of the effort.”

He points out that some critically acclaimed movies — “Inherent Vice,” “Nightcrawler,” “Birdman” and, in previous years, “Her,” “American Hustle” and “Zero Dark Thirty” — were made with financing from wealthy individuals like the independent producer Megan Ellison. “The grace of billionaires is not a great business model on which to hang the hopes of an art form,” says Mr. Harris.

But Richard Brody at The New Yorker likes the involvement of these wealthy patrons: “It’s the best hope for the art form, and it has served the art form well,” he says.

He adds: “I don’t know and don’t care whether they’re in it for the money as well or only for the art. What matters is that they’re getting films made — getting many of the best films of the era made, and they’re doing so without the rigmarole of studio bureaucracy and studio interference.”

In this view, directors are freed from the production of “industrial” movies to focus instead on more personal material. Jason Bailey at Flavorwire also focuses on directors. But for him, the blockbuster system is stifling the visions of many well-known veterans. “There’s an entire constellation of cult and indie stars, filmmakers who came of age in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, who have either vanished from the current scene or are struggling to maintain a place within it,” he writes. “How many of that generation’s auteurs have we lost? How many great movies — how many ‘Blue Velvets’ and ‘Hairsprays’ and ‘Traffics’ and ‘Do the Right Things’ and ‘Godfathers’ — are they, thanks to the current myopic model, not making?”

Directors must be willing to work with low budgets — in some cases, extremely low budgets. And even if they decide to take the plunge, distribution — and an audience — is not guaranteed.

For these filmmakers and others like them, he sees two options. The first is an “increasingly crowded indie scene.” This offers smaller budgets and “twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie.”

The other is TV. He notes that many filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh (with “The Knick”) and David Lynch (with a revived “Twin Peaks”) have jumped into the medium.

“But is television an acceptable substitute for the scale and scope of a major motion picture?” he asks. “The budgets are often scarcely better than those low numbers on the indie model, and it’s a very different type of storytelling, open-ended, rarely working towards the kind of satisfying conclusions a great movie can offer.”

Mr. Poland also admits that some directors are making movies for “very little money.” And he also sees that “some filmmakers who are used to getting $60 to $90 million pretty easily are finding that door closed.” But, he adds, it’s not impossible: “Ron Howard is still making movies of skill and size and quality … maybe the best work of his career. Barry Levinson has his second truly indie film out this year.”

Still, Mr. Harris looks at the next five years’ worth of superhero films and franchises and considers “how much of Hollywood’s collective effort and money and insistence and attention that roster is going to consume.” And, he remarks, “if you love movies, you have to sigh a little. And if you care, you have to resist consoling yourself by claiming it was ever thus, because it wasn’t.”

Mr. Bailey also looks to the future. For him, “studio filmmaking may be on the verge of the point it reached in the mid-to-late 1960s, when a bad run of bloated, runaway productions, reflecting market calculation rather than vibrant storytelling, just about put the studios out of business. The movies only managed to save themselves because the suits handed over the car keys to young filmmakers with original stories to tell and a new way of telling them.”

[jo]

One of the comments to the above article --

Noire
Miami 13 hours ago
I completely agree with Mr. Bailey and I myself am a huge fan of superhero films ever since the first X-men film (2000) starring Hugh jackman and now we are in 2015. Although I think films within this genre are progressing rapidly through the years, but I think it is too much. It's taking over the cinemas and I would like to see a movie of its own complexity and story created by its own director get the recognition it deserves rather than a typical series of films that mostly includes only a certain type of genre, that of a superhero genre.

But I'm thankful for someone like Christopher Nolan who can venture out. Haha

The trend was really started by how Bryan Singer presented comic-book material and characters as serious plot points and strong characters in the first XMEN movie. It had a strong appeal and not only attracted the fanboy demos but also appealed to adults who were comic book readers before.

That Hugh Jackman was part of that discovery process is ironic in many ways. His background was theatre and drama but he chose the acting profession per se. Hugh would eventually benefit from that sustained exposure through the XMEN franchise movies with developing a strong fanbase. But early on, he did cultivate opportunities to explore other genres ( romcoms, other action movies) and other branches of the performing arts ( The Boy from Oz). Eventually he tried to work with auteurs ( Aronofsky, Nolan, Luhrmann, Allen, etc) and occasionally portrayed roles that were outside his known film genres. Movies like Les Miserables and Prisoners have helped built his reputation for versatility among the current major actors/performers. He also set a trend of looking at theatre for artistic fulfillment ( a trend now followed by many Hollywood stars going to Broadway for their dash of art ).

Once more, we see Hugh taking other film challenges that seemed a little strange ( Chappie, Pan, etc.) -- but he continues to explore and widen his interests in developing his art. Another example is his tendency to look at new work when he does serious theatre. Many of the stars use revivals to test the waters...but maybe some will follow Hugh's example.

Another irony -- it has been speculated by some that Hugh has been able to work out a deal for FOX to produce and support GREATEST SHOWMAN ON EARTH ( risky on many counts - a musical, new work, new creative team) because he is the main asset of FOX's most lucrative franchise.  Artistic leveraging

At some point in his career -he will no longer play Wolverine. He has never been afraid to take on new challenges. But I am sure he will continue to do movies that are considered blockbuster-ish ( PAN) to support his other artistic goals. He needs to be on people's minds. It is no longer a time when the star system ensured a continuing celebrated status even if movie projects are not very visible. Let us hope that the movers and shakers in Hollywood, and his fanbase, continue to keep their faith in him!

Jo

[mamaleh]

Amen!

Ellen

[jo]

Ellen!



PS: Look at how some of the "serious actors" followed him into blockbuster territory --

*Johnny Depp as pirate Jack Sparrow

*Robert Downey, Jr., as The Iron Man

*Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader

*Matt Damon as Jason Bourne

*James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as young-ish XMEN. Fassy is even due to make a film derived from a video game called ASSASSIN'S CREED.


Even the ladies have joined the fray --

*Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man, etc

*Angelina Jolie in Maleficent

*Anne Hathaway in Batman

*Jennifer Lawrence has feet planted in opposing genres ( Oscar-baits and blockbusters).


And there are actors who were unknowns in blockbusters but that newfound fame helped them get into more serious roles --

*Chris Hemsworth - from Thor to Rush!

*Although of course, in the past, Sean Connery (from Bond to more varied and serious roles) and Harrison Ford ( from Star Wars/Indiana Jones to more serious roles) may have inspired, to some extent, Hugh's career path?



Hugh Jackman - you are a true Pied Piper


Jo

[njr]

Angelina J was also in the Lara Croft series of action movies.

Nancy

[jo]

Is this why superhero movies do not lose their appeal ?

Michael Coughlan ‏@michael81014170 · 26m26 minutes ago
X-Men DOFP. Really is amazing to see comics I read as a kid come to life. Thanks @realhughjackman & cast & crew for helping me stay young

[jo]

Probably just rumors or fans's pure speculations - but I've read that Christian Bale is being enticed to do a "The Dark Knight Returns" and that Bale might consider it if he got the same deal as Robert Downey for Iron Man smiley-rolleyes010


Jo

[jo]

Slightly off-topic but may be of interest.

Remember Tom Rothman who co-chaired Fox Filmed Entertainment with Jim Gianopulos and was responsible for some of the movies under the XMEN franchise? He has been appointed to head SONY Pictures, after Amy Pascal was let go.

deadline.com/2015/02/tom-rothman-replaces-amy-pascal-sony-1201380416/


www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-tom-rothman-sony-pictures-chairman-films-amy-pascal-20150224-story.html

[jo]

Interesting and eye-opening article on the value of social media, especially TWEETS, to a film's Box Office potential!

www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/how-much-is-a-tweet-worth-to-studios-dollar560-at-the-box-office/ar-BBi24wd?ocid=DELLDHP

Tweet on smiley-happy036

[jo]

It looks like a studio has picked up a concept package of a new musical with Josh Gad with the score to be written by Menken and Schwartz, but the script still to come. Sounds like a new direction for movies, maybe more specifically for movie musicals.

Here is a discussion on the project and what's happening in Hollywood --

deadline.com/2015/04/josh-gad-musical-chris-pratt-packaged-pics-hollywood-liberals-hillary-clinton-1201412569/

Universal Wins 7-Figure Auction For Josh Gad & Jeremy Garelick Musical With Alan Menken &...



FLEMING: Last week’s big seven-figure pitch deal — Universal bought a vehicle for Josh Gad that Jeremy Garelick will write/direct with songs from Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz – will pay eight figures to that quartet if the movie gets made. It’s just the latest of a bunch of recent deals that had lit agents telling me that writers are seeing more love from studios than at any time since that disastrous writer’s strike. Well, I should qualify that. If you write on assignment, you still take what studios are willing to give you and if you haven’t delivered drafts that got any recent movies made, you’re all but unhireable. But if you can come up with a pitch, write a spec or make a proof-of-content short film like the sci-fi Sundays, and are repped by an agency that has enough talent to encrust your creation with elements, you stand a really good chance of making a lot more money than you usually get. Every studio bid on the musical, which had an intriguing pitch process; it was Universal’s second seven-figure pitch deal of the week after The Judge scribe Bill Dubuque’s Chris Pratt-attached The Real McCoy, which spiked Dubuque’s writing fee to $1.5 million. Landing on both projects as producer was Michael De Luca, who during his short run as Sony Pictures production president bought more of this kind of material than anyone in town.


BART: I admire anyone who has the guts to develop a musical. Over the years I have listened faithfully as talented artists played and sang their shows in their search for funding and I have come to this conclusion: I have no idea how to predict what will work and what won’t when it comes to musicals. Reading the reviews of Finding Neverland, I wonder if Harvey Weinstein has come to the same conclusion. I have not seen the show; it may attract a broad family audience, but critics and non-critics tell me the songs are instantly forgettable. Years ago I visited the home of the great Fritz Loewe to hear him and the equally great Alan Jay Lerner perform their next movie musical. It was called The Little Prince. Loewe played piano and Lerner sang (sort of). I was anticipating a return to My Fair Lady. They told me it’s a hit; I told them it’s a miss. Unfortunately I was right. I lived through the dailies of Paint Your Wagon. I told the director, Josh Logan, the idea of casting Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in singing roles was weird. He told me it was brilliant. Alas, I was right, but the movie has become a sort of cult favorite. Clearly the studio executives who bid against each other for the rights to the new musical you reported on, Mike, have more confidence in their predictive talents than I. And I sincerely hope they are right.


FLEMING: I too wondered why so many studios got excited for a musical that right now only has a concept, and whose book hasn’t been written yet, nor the songs. Gad and Garelick pitched each studio with Menken in tow, and Schwartz participating via Skype. While the star and director (who developed the pitch together) set up a storyline that has Gad working as a domestic in a household led by a busy single mom, Menken and Schwartz chimed in at moments that begged for a song. And they described the emotional core of each tune they will write. Menken has more Oscars than anybody alive, and Schwartz has several and also did Wicked, which was important because that is minting money for Universal and a stage musical for this one is part of the plan. I think what made this very intriguing is that it was presented as two parallel collaborations, script and music, that have to be done hand in hand, just like they do it for the stage. Gad knows that process from stage work in such musicals as The Book Of Mormon, and that was a big reason Menken and Schwartz became involved on the ground floor. It seemed preferable for a studio to buy in on a detailed explanation of concept, rather than on a spec script to which those songwriters would have added tunes. I’m told that just doesn’t work. Hollywood hasn’t generated an original movie musical since Newsies. Fox hopes to end that streak with the Michael Gracey-directed PT Barnum musical with Hugh Jackman, but I can see why this pitch was so enticing for studios looking for something different. You are right, though. Musicals are hard. Remember, that Wicked was a movie project languishing in development hell when they decided to go to the stage first. It pours cash at such an astonishing rate that Universal and producer Marc Platt have been in no hurry to make the inevitable movie.


BART: The other night I saw Jersey Boys a second time and realized that, contrary to initial reactions, Clint Eastwood had made a damn good movie. His big risk was in totally restructuring the show. On the level of drama, it was a smart decision; on the level of entertainment, it was a mistake. Again, that’s what’s so perplexing about crafting a successful musical. So again let’s sing a chorus of There’s No (Risky) Business like Show (Risky) Business.

FLEMING: I’m tracking several other material submissions that will end in deals. Studios have differing priorities but everybody’s buying. Universal’s development funding is bursting at the seams after Fifty Shades of Grey and Furious 7, with several other big hits coming. They are spending large. Paramount is eager to show it’ll be a friendlier and more prolific place under Marc Evans (the studio was in it to the end on that Gad/Garelick musical). Fox, which just bought the Paul Feig-attached Play-Doh package, wants more big swings, and so does Warner Bros’ Greg Silverman and New Line’s Toby Emmerich. MGM is also aggressive; Sony will have to make statement buys, which Tom Rothman did to launch TriStar; and don’t forget Lionsgate. Bottom line, these studios have cut internal development and gutted producing deals and they need to fill slates around their tent poles from middle of 2016 and beyond. Everybody saw how Sony bought the Jonathan Spaihts script Passengers and quickly got the hottest filmmaker in The Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum, and hottest talent in Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence.

Jonathan Levine and Miles Teller aligned with Home Is Burning and the book sold in four days. Even better if the agencies do the packaging, which is why the majors – CAA, WME and UTA – have become the studio president’s best friend. Studios are happy to have the agents assemble projects while they focus on the global tent poles. It seems odd that studio execs would leave those decisions to deal makers but that is what is happening. The cupboard’s bare, and we want packages, studios are telling agencies. Everything with strong source material and elements seems to be selling lately, often with multiple suitors fighting for it.

BART: I’ve been surprised these last few years to hear one studio executive after another tell me they were sharply cutting development. The ultimate result of this strategy, I felt, would be to trigger a studio dependence on pickups or packages. A secondary result would be to drive many writers out of the market. Yet the cutbacks have now taken place with the predictable damage. Why? One reason relates to the corporate desperation to reduce spending any way they can, even if it means curtailing research and development. A secondary reason: development has been mismanaged by inept studio executives. One studio chief confided that only 10% of his projects in development would ever come to fruition. That’s not a program, it’s an ‘oops.’ So now we have a situation in which frantic bidding breaks out as fully developed projects hit the market. That’s an expensive way of doing business for the studios. I hope it nonetheless gets some good movies made.

FLEMING: The difference between the old spec script boom and now is that studios are buying things they are sure they can practically pencil in on the release calendar. Maybe that is why they don’t just want a naked pitch or spec. It makes the agents and managers assembling these projects some kind of hybrid between studio exec and producer who can either sell these pictures directly to the studios or instead to the monied companies like Teddy Schwarzman’s Black Bear, confident that studios will pick them up later. That company plucked Graham Moore’s script for The Imitation Game after Warner Bros let it go. They packaged it and sold it to The Weinstein Company in a record deal at 2014 Berlin. Schwarzman just did it again with the Stephen Gaghan-directed Gold with Matthew McConaughey, which TWC bought for $15 million with a P&A commitment north of $20 million. Guys like Schwarzman have become integral cogs in the way that studios line their slates, particularly with the prestige pictures that thrive at year end.

It doesn't seem easy at all to get a movie musical project get a greenlight!

Hugh has been attached to GREATEST SHOWMAN ON EARTH since 2009. The project was based on the Jenny Bicks script and focused on the infatuation of Barnum with opera singer Jenny Lind. The music was supposed to have been composed by Mika.

Years later, it gets revived, with Bill Condon ( Dreamgirls, soon Beauty and the Beast) polishing the original script. It has also been reported that FOX wanted to reposition the theme to one focusing on Barnum's rise to fame as a circus innovator (Barnum and Bailey_ and impresario, rather than on a dark side of his life, thus making way for a movie that can attract a wider demographics. A new composing team Pasek and Paul has been hired to write the score, although it seems there might be other musical contributions from other sources. "Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the Tony-nominated duo behind A Christmas Story, are among the composers who will provide material for the movie. The score will also feature songs by Scissor Sisters front-man Jake Shears, singer/songwriter Bonnie McKee and Brian Lapin."...Michael Gracey has been attached since the days when the project was in development limbo.

The movie gets the greenlight, a filming date is firmed up, and a release date of December 25, 2016 has been announced by Fox, with the view of attracting the family-friendly audience members...and maybe, hopefully, the attention of nominating committees for Oscar and related award bodies.

So, it may take all of seven years before it can open in the cinemas!

How long will the Gad/Menken/Schawrtz project take before we see in on the big screen?


Jo

[jo]

It looks like even movie musicals follow the successful trend for superhero movies -- pitch it towards the young demos!

pro.boxoffice.com/

Pitch Perfect 2 is expected to earn $ 69 million on its first weekend, outpacing Mad Max by a substantial amount. Am I surprised that Mamma Mia! is the top box office attraction worldwide for this genre -- maybe the main reason of the appeal was a storyline pitched for a young demos and the casting of Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper? Was the box office success of Les Miserables more of an exception ( because of its serious theme and its casting of renowned actors)...or was the appeal of Eponine to the younger demos part of the reason?

Pitch Perfect 2 is a release of Universal Studios, which also released Mamma Mia! and Les Miserables. Hopefully, Fox will give strong support to Greatest Showman on Earth. I am also hoping that Zac Efron has signed on for a key role.

From superhero movies to fairy tales ...and now even movie musicals. We are all young...or young at heart!


Jo

[jo]

An insightful article from THE ATLANTIC on what's happening to the young American actor --

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/the-decline-of-the-american-actor/395291/

The Decline of the American Actor

Why the under-40 generation of American leading men is struggling—and what to do about it


Terrence Rafferty
| July/August 2015 Issue



Is it time for American actors to take a hard look in the mirror? Earlier this year Michael Douglas mused darkly to a magazine interviewer, “I think we have a little crisis going on amongst our young actors at this point,” and Spike Lee, commenting on the “invasion” of black British actors, had some pithy observations on the subject, too: “You want talented people,” he said, and British actors’ “training is very proper, whereas some of these other brothers and sisters, you know, they come in here, and they don’t got that training.” Douglas and Lee, just like the rest of us who go to the movies, are a tad puzzled about why so many good American roles have been going to English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Australian, and Canadian actors. The phenomenon may have reached its unignorable peak in last year’s docudrama Selma: the parts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Governor George Wallace, and President Lyndon B. Johnson were all played by Brits.


Film audiences, of course, have long since accustomed themselves to seeing nonnative speakers of American—Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Liam Neeson, Clive Owen, and their international ilk—confidently impersonating Yanks on the silver screen. Now the migrant thespians are starting to dominate stateside TV, too. On any given night of channel surfing or Netflix browsing in the past few seasons, you’re likely to have happened upon an English actor or two playing a 100 percent born-and-bred American: Andrew Lincoln, David Morrissey, and Lennie James on The Walking Dead, Hugh Dancy on Hannibal, Charlie Cox on Daredevil, Freddie Highmore and Olivia Cooke on Bates Motel, Damian Lewis and Rupert Friend on Homeland, Eddie Marsan on Ray Donovan, Janet McTeer on Battle Creek, Dominic West and Ruth Wilson on The Affair, or Hugh Laurie on House. You might also have come across the odd Welshman (Michael Sheen on Masters of Sex), Scot (Alan Cumming on The Good Wife), Irishman (Colin Farrell on True Detective), Canadian (Taylor Kitsch on Friday Night Lights), or Australian (Robert Taylor on Longmire), each of them with an eerily undetectable accent. Crisis or not, this is getting embarrassing...

Do go on -- it is a long article but a very interesting read! Quite a few hometruths that he talks about.


This is again part of the casualty of the kind of entertainment that American audiences ( although the overseas marketS are as equally guilty) heavily support at the cinemas --

And it’s not as if a wealth of good, nonclassical parts are being written for younger Americans in the movies either. In the fertile moviemaking environment of the 1970s, De Niro and Pacino and Gene Hackman and Jeff Bridges didn’t need the theater and its deep repertory in order to satisfy their creative urges and grow as artists. Actors can’t do what they do in isolation, as writers and painters and composers can. The theatrical arts are collaborative, both in the microcosm of an individual production and in the macrocosm of the culture that does, or does not, sustain them. It’s fair to say that American culture isn’t providing a high level of sustenance right now, and actors—like so many others in the every-man-for-himself climate of 2015—have to figure out, on their own, ways to get what they need. The question is whether they can muster the imagination, and the stamina, to maintain their technique (and their spirits) while dealing with the sort of material available to them in this movie culture: cop dramas, superhero adventures, rom-coms and bro comedies, the occasional earnest, glacially paced indie. It’s not impossible, but it can be a heavy lift.

Most of the American actors fronting heavyweight Hollywood franchises these days, all those guys named Chris, do not have the air of men who are enjoying what they do. One of the Chrises—Evans, who plays Captain America—recently told Variety that he’s planning to quit acting when his Marvel contract is up. The thrill, it seems, is gone.

I guess this is another reason why we see more film actors treading the boards these days.

Hugh realized it early on, that the more satisfying career lies in accepting challenges from both mediums. He is also now stepping into a new world of acting -- no longer superhero-centric, but with types of roles that he has not done before. Watch out for COLLATERAL BEAUTY

Come to think of it, the setting for Collateral Beauty is New York City and Hugh presumably plays an American ?

And this is where training is an advantage - playing someone else has been done many times in acting school, so an actor is very comfortable stepping into different kinds of acting challenges.

Jo

[jo]

Two interesting articles --

Dustin Hoffman talks about the decline of film/cinema --

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/dustin-hoffman-interview-the-graduate-talks-decline-of-cinema-difficulties-finding-work-and-wanting-to-be-a-jazz-pianist-10363780.html

Excerpts --

“I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been and I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been – in the 50 years that I’ve been doing it, it’s the worst,” he claims...



Hoffman has an ocean of experience to compare the industry of today with yesteryear. “It’s hard to believe you can do good work for the little amount of money these days. We did The Graduate and that film still sustains, it had a wonderful script that they spent three years on, and an exceptional director with an exceptional cast and crew, but it was a small movie, four walls and actors, that is all, and yet it was 100 days of shooting.”

Most films today, away from the comic strip or robot adaptations, are made in around 20 days. Part of the reason is that digital technology enables filmmakers to shoot more scenes in a day than they used to, but mostly it’s to do with the downsizing of budgets as more and more films get made. The films that have been squeezed the most by this development have been the quality dramas, a genre that has a habit of calling on Hoffman’s inimitable services...



He’s also been hit by the vagaries of time. Whereas in The Graduate, Hoffman was the one being schooled, he’s now the one dishing out lessons in The Choir. “The truth is that you come full circle. I was a freak accident, so I got a lead that happened to be The Graduate and it was like a light switch went on and I was an instant star. For most actors you start by playing euphemistically called supporting roles, it’s not even the supporting role it’s less than that, and if you are lucky you build up to supporting roles and then to starring roles – and then you reach a certain age, and unfortunately women usually reach it earlier, and you are no longer the leading man, therefore you become the supporting actor, which many times is the mentor of the lead. That is full circle.”...

Michael Douglas talks about the decline of the importance of young American actors --


www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/michael-douglas-social-media-obsession-is-to-blame-for-crisis-in-young-american-actors-10372920.html

A lot has changed in Hollywood since Michael Douglas started acting 50 years ago. But while the 70-year-old is happy to keep up with the young, there's one thing he doesn't like about up-and-coming actors today.

Douglas has spoken out against US actors' obsession with social media, claiming that American talent will suffer as a consequence of young stars "getting caught up in their image".

“There’s something going on with young American actors - both men and women - because the Brits and Australians are taking many of the best American roles from them,” he told The Independent.

“Clearly, it breaks down on two fronts. In Britain they take their training seriously while in the States we’re going through a sort of social media image conscious thing rather than formal training. Many actors are getting caught up in this image thing which is going on to affect their range.


“With the Aussies, particularly with the males it’s the masculinity. In the US we have this relatively asexual or unisex area with sensitive young men and we don’t have many Channing Tatums or Chris Pratts, while the Aussies do. It’s a phenomena.”

The Wonder Boys actor also spoke about how Carey Mulligan had managed to take on the role as a New York school girl, a part which would have traditionally gone to an American actress.

“There’s a crisis in young American actors right now,” he says. “Everyone’s much more image conscious than they are about actually playing the part.“

Asked whether he agreed with Dustin Hoffman’s view that the film industry is the “worst it has ever been”, Douglas said he understood Hoffman but believes other outlets such as Netflix and HBO are now doing what would have been traditionally done in cinema.

“I understand what he’s saying, but I think you have to look at the delivery system. There’s a lot of good stuff being made in the cable area, good writing there. Kramer vs Kramer, those great mainline films he was in aren’t being made anymore [for cinema] but are in a different delivery system.


“Most of the great screen writers have gone into the cable area because that’s where they can also produce. The problem in making a film for cinema is the cost of distribution. People can scrape together money for a movie but not the advertising.“...

[jo]

“There’s something going on with young American actors - both men and women - because the Brits and Australians are taking many of the best American roles from them,” he told The Independent.

“Clearly, it breaks down on two fronts. In Britain they take their training seriously while in the States we’re going through a sort of social media image conscious thing rather than formal training. Many actors are getting caught up in this image thing which is going on to affect their range.


“With the Aussies, particularly with the males it’s the masculinity. In the US we have this relatively asexual or unisex area with sensitive young men and we don’t have many Channing Tatums or Chris Pratts, while the Aussies do. It’s a phenomena.”

Hugh Jackman, an Australian with British roots, rates equally high on both counts -- the training ( which manifests in his versatility on film and stage) and the masculinity factor.

Jo

[jo]

The New York Times analyzes what's happening at the box office --

www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/business/media/hollywood-is-producing-higher-highs-lower-lows.html?hpw&rref=movies&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=thumb&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

Hollywood Is Producing Higher Highs, Lower Lows


By BROOKS BARNES and MICHAEL CIEPLYNOV. 8, 2015




For months, American moviegoers have either been going big or staying home.


And if they keep behaving that way, 2015 may set new marks for both hits and misses — while leaving a hole in the middle, where Oscars are typically born.

“Spectre,” the latest James Bond thriller, took in about $73 million in ticket sales at domestic theaters over the weekend, giving Hollywood one of its biggest openings of the year, even though sales were down sharply from those for “Skyfall,” the previous Bond movie. “Spectre,” the most expensive 007 installment ever, costing Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Eon Productions roughly $400 million to make and market, has taken in an additional $223 million overseas, breaking records.


The performance of “Spectre” in North America, along with very strong opening results for “The Peanuts Movie,” which collected about $45 million for 20th Century Fox, ended a funk that included October ticket sales dropping about 44 percent from a year ago, to $493.7 million, according to the database Box Office Mojo. But it also highlighted the unevenness in a year when September sales had just risen nearly 49 percent, to $677.5 million.

September was driven by “Hotel Transylvania 2,” from Sony. October belonged to “The Martian,” from Fox.

But in both months, high-profile, midrange films that were being closely monitored as awards prospects flopped — among them Sony’s “The Walk,” Universal’s “Steve Jobs” and Warner’s “Our Brand Is Crisis.” And those joined more commercially oriented wipeouts like “Pan,” “Rock the Kasbah,” “The Last Witch Hunter,” “Jem and the Holograms” and “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.”

To make “Spectre” feel like a must-attend event, Sony booked the film into more than 800 large-format theaters, including Imax locations. Led by the Cinemark chain, Premium Large Format theaters contributed $8 million of the gross; Imax accounted for about $9 million in sales. Even though the Imax total was on the soft side — “Spectre” took in 29 percent less in Imax than “Skyfall” did in 2012 — Greg Foster, Imax’s filmed entertainment chief, said his company was “very happy” with the result.


Mr. Foster noted that strong international sales were more than compensating for domestic soft spots. “Over time, everything is international, and China,” he said, referring to the strategic future of the major studios.

Rory Bruer, Sony’s president of distribution, called the “Spectre” results “quite extraordinary,” noting that among the 24 Bond films, only “Skyfall” delivered a bigger opening total. “It sometimes takes a franchise of this caliber — big, iconic, beloved — to bring people back into theaters,” he said.

One awards prospect that may break through the cloud of disappointment is Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight,” a critically lauded newspaper drama from Open Road Films. That picture enjoyed a splendid opening in a very small number of theaters, taking in $302,276 in just five locations in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, where the movie is set. The strong sales, averaging more than $60,000 per screen, raised the possibility that “Spotlight” would become a classic midrange hit, mixing plaudits and ticket sales, just as “Argo” and “The King’s Speech” — both best-picture Oscar winners — did in years past.



“There were multiple sellouts in every theater, every day,” said Jason Cassidy, Open Road’s chief marketing officer.

The trick now, he acknowledged, will be to fan the flames by expanding the film to about 60 theaters in 17 cities next weekend, then to as many as 500 locations on Nov. 20. “There haven’t been too many movies that have been able to cut through the noise,” Mr. Cassidy said of the recent failures among smaller, more sophisticated films.

Over all, North American ticket sales so far this year are up 5 percent compared with the same period in 2014, according to the Rentrak reporting service. But the increase does not reflect what has traditionally been considered a healthy movie marketplace — more hits than misses, with films of different sizes and aimed at different slices of the population, chugging toward profit.

Instead, the boost comes almost entirely from a handful of megamovies: “Jurassic World,” “The Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Inside Out,” “Furious 7” and those fall hits, “The Martian” and “Hotel Transylvania 2.”




In the shrinking middle ground between hits and misses are awards contenders like "Spotlight." Credit Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films, via Associated Press

With the release of “Spectre,” Hollywood now turns to two movies that are expected to be monsters: “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Advance ticket sales for the new “Star Wars” installment, Hollywood’s closest thing to a guaranteed smash hit, have already shattered records.

The question is whether the 70 or so other movies set for release between now and Jan. 1 will be left to pick up crumbs.

One theory of the current dynamic is that studios have released too many movies that go after the same audience — “Steve Jobs” ate into “The Walk” ate into “Black Mass,” for example.

But distributors have already trimmed schedules to curtail the cannibalism. Fox Searchlight, an Oscar powerhouse, introduced its dramedy “Demolition,” with Jake Gyllenhaal, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, but held the movie for release next April. In all, Box Office Mojo counted 72 films in the marketplace during October, down from 77 last year (but still up from the mid-1990s, when October picture counts averaged 27).

Another worry is that consumer behavior may be changing on a deeper level. In pursuit of global audiences and trying to combat the arrival of mammoth flat-screen televisions in America’s living rooms, Hollywood has steered sharply toward event movies. The likes of “Spectre,” “Star Wars” and “The Hunger Games” work so hard to get people into theaters — and make the 3-D tickets and costly concessions palatable — that consumers just can’t be bothered to check out the more modest offerings.

They will catch those on their enormous televisions.

Still, some midlevel films have quietly ground out decent results. Those lately have included “Goosebumps,” “Bridge of Spies” and “The Intern.”

And the audience has a way of creating its own monsters, especially when it comes to end-of-year releases. This year, the late entries will include Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur”; David O. Russell’s “Joy,” with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence; Alejandro González Iñárritu’s western “The Revenant,” with Leonardo DiCaprio; Quentin Tarantino’s western “The Hateful Eight,” with Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson; and Peter Landesman’s “Concussion,” with Will Smith.

Last year, the last-minute surprise was Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” which starred Mr. Cooper. Much like the midrange films that have been disappointing this year — say, Mr. Cooper’s “Burnt,” which arrived softly in late October — “American Sniper” had a big star and a relatively modest budget.

Released by Warner on Christmas Day, “American Sniper” shot past “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” to become the year’s biggest hit, with six Oscar nominations and more than $350 million in domestic box office sales.

This time around, Warner is hoping that a pair of dramas can deliver similar magic. “Creed” restarts the “Rocky” boxing series, and Ron Howard’s “In the Heart of the Sea” focuses on the sinking of a whaling ship.

But it may be awfully hard for those films to draw crowds with behemoths like “Star Wars” hogging the marquees.

[jo]

2015 has been a great year at the box office, both for the domestic and the international markets --

www.cinemablend.com/new/Global-Audiences-Spent-Record-Breaking-Amount-Money-Movies-2015-103737.html

[jo]

It's Oscars time soon!

Here's a very revealing article from VARIETY on the cost of OSCAR campaigning --

variety.com/2016/film/awards/oscar-campaigns-cost-leonardo-dicaprio-1201682447/

A Breakdown of the ‘Outrageous’ Costs of 2015’s Oscar Campaigns


Oscars Campaign final Push
Elias Stein for Variety
January 20, 2016 | 10:00AM PT

Brent Lang
Senior Film and Media Reporter

Ramin Setoodeh
Film Editor, New York




Leonardo DiCaprio may have devoured real bison liver while shooting “The Revenant,” but Oscar voters have a far better meal plan: breakfast at Monkey Bar, lunch at Le Bernardin, dinner at the Harvard Club. For the 6,000-plus members of the Academy, awards season is now synonymous with handshakes and selfies against a stream of lavish buffets.

Welcome to the new reality of the Academy Awards. In the past decade, the heightened frenzy of campaigning has forced even reclusive actors to wine and dine voters. But as a result of 2015’s sheer competitiveness — with no clear front-runner in most of the top categories — the major studios (like Paramount, Fox and Universal) as well as upstart boutique labels (like Bleecker Street, Broad Green and A24) invested heavily on the campaign trail. They were joined by Netflix, which aggressively splurged on events for its inaugural narrative feature, “Beasts of No Nation,” only to see the gritty drama get shut out at last week’s nominations announcement.

“It’s outrageous,” fumed one indie studio chief, regarding the stacks of money being tossed around. “It reminds me of Republican fundraisers, but the Academy has decided not to put any restraints on this kind of spending.”

That’s not entirely true. Now that voting enters its second phase, Oscar rules stipulate that no events can serve food or drinks — to push back against the notion that a statue can be bought. But studios have found creative solutions to this policy, too. For example, they frequently arrange for a nominee to accept an award at a film festival (like Santa Barbara), where there will be Oscar voters; offer career retrospectives at museums or theaters; or stage a concert with film music.

The splintered race for best picture — “favorite” status is shared among as many as four films: “The Revenant” (12 total nominations), “Mad Max: Fury Road” (10), “The Martian” (7) and “Spotlight” (6) — is likely to encourage more advertising and promotion targeted to voters. Many of the other big races, from director to supporting actress, also seem like a game of “anything goes.” There’s already speculation that the directing snub of Ridley Scott may create an “Argo” effect, where voters could flock to “The Martian” to make up for the omission.

For films in the thick of the best picture hunt, smaller studios can expect to shell out $3 million for lobbying voters, while major studios figure to spend up to $10 million, sources tell Variety. And even though the meals and parties are ostensibly over, the cost of mailing watermarked screeners of the films to Oscar, guild and (earlier) Globes voters can set studios back up to $300,000.

In the past, studios relied heavily on frequent ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. But both publications have morphed from dailies to weeklies, and the money that companies spend on digital advertising represents a fraction of what they shelled out for print in trades and in the Los Angeles Times, which continues to see its readership shrink.

Studios are reallocating their resources. Believing a personal touch is essential, they want their stars to take as many selfies as possible with voters, which is why the number of Q&As during this period has surged. At this year’s BAFTA Tea in Los Angeles, Brie Larson shared her biggest fear of awards season. “I’m scared I’m going to get pink eye,” she said, alluding to all the hands she’ll touch before her red carpet debut at the Oscars. And it’s not cheap to ship talent around to various screenings and talk shows — travel can be the second highest expense for studios during awards season after TV ads, which are purportedly targeted at the general public, but are really aimed at Oscar voters in Los Angeles and New York.

Top Oscar consultants, a group that includes Cynthia Swartz, Karen Fried, Lisa Taback and Tony Angellotti, can expect to pull in tens of thousands of dollars for their awards-whispering efforts. Not only do they get hefty fees, they receive bonuses if films make Oscar short-lists, score nominations, and go on to win the gold.

In return, they produce highly detailed spreadsheets on voters’ opinions of their films. “It’s a cottage industry that they’ve created,” said a studio executive. “But you need them. They know who is voting and how to reach them.”

And they do not include the costs of special screenings with Q&A's with the director and major cast!


That is why I have become cynical about Oscars results! In 2013, Universal did put up a major effort to push LES MISERABLES. They even hired one of the publicity consultants mentioned in the article to handle the whole campaign ( Tony Angelotti) and they were supposed to have spent around $ 10 million.

In the past, there was even talk that at Golden Globes level, the small membership ( over a hundred) were not only wined and dined but also got some freebie holidays (mostly traced to Harvey Weinstein, so the rumors go).

But unlike the Spielberg movie ( LINCOLN) whose main campaigner was Steven Spielberg himself, and Silver Linings Playbook whose main campaigner was Harvey Weinstein, LES MISERABLES never got a Time Cover like the LINCOLN lead and both major Hollywood producers were able to arrange special White House screenings. Les Miserables was dependent mainly on the efforts of Tom, Hugh et al. They did get a special number performed at the Oscars - which merited a standing ovation. But how did they manage that? It seemed that because SUDDENLY was a nominated song, that its slot was used to do a full scale ONE DAY MORE, while Hugh sang only a few lines of his lullaby to Cosette

ARGO actually won the Oscar Best Picture, but has it even been talked about these days? Les Miserables crops up in quite a few conversations still, both on traditional and social media!

[jo]

Sweeping changes at the AMPAS, particularly in terms of membership and Oscar voting rules !!

www.msn.com/en-us/movies/oscars/academy-overhauls-membership-voting-rules-to-promote-oscar-diversity/ar-BBozVfX?li=BBnb7Kz

2016 Academy Awards
Sunday Feb. 28 at 8:30 p.m. ET/ 5:30 p.m. PT on ABC

Academy Overhauls Membership, Voting Rules to Promote Oscar Diversity


Tim Gray
1 hr ago


The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has approved a sweeping series of substantive changes designed to make the Academy’s membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse. The Board’s goal is to commit to doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.

“The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “These new measures regarding governance and voting will have an immediate impact and begin the process of significantly changing our membership composition.”

Beginning later this year, each new member’s voting status will last 10 years, and will be renewed if that new member has been active in motion pictures during that decade. In addition, members will receive lifetime voting rights after three ten-year terms; or if they have won or been nominated for an Academy Award. We will apply these same standards retroactively to current members. In other words, if a current member has not been active in the last 10 years they can still qualify by meeting the other criteria. Those who do not qualify for active status will be moved to emeritus status. Emeritus members do not pay dues but enjoy all the privileges of membership, except voting. This will not affect voting for this year’s Oscars.

At the same time, the Academy will supplement the traditional process in which current members sponsor new members by launching an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity.

The decision was made at an emergency board meeting Thursday night. Academy honchos, including president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and CEO Dawn Hudson, opted not to wait for the regularly scheduled board meeting on Jan. 26. The changes were announced Friday morning.

Also on Thursday, sources said the Academy met with ABC officials and reps of Chris Rock, confirming that he will host the Feb. 28 ceremony. Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee and Will Smith said they will not attend. Some other activists had urged Rock to withdraw; he never addressed those directly, but insiders said he believes he can do more good by remaining, since the Academy Awards reach a worldwide audience.

After worldwide media criticism over the Jan. 14 Oscar nominations, Academy officials knew they had to make some bold moves, and make them quickly. The image of the Oscars and the Academy were tarnished when the all-Caucasian lineup of 20 actors immediately led to bigger questions about the lack of diversity within the Academy — and ultimately within the industry.

Nobody was asking for quotas or affirmative action; instead, the protests were angry at Hollywood’s longtime failure to recognize racial and gender diversity in the country. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that non-whites constitute nearly 40% of the population. Yet studio decision-makers are overwhelmingly white and male, which is reflected in their films and especially their awards hopefuls.

Hudson and Boone Isaacs have helped champion a push to invite more diverse members; in June, the org announced invitations to a record 322 new members, representing a cross-section of the population. But with 6,261 voting members, the new additions apparently didn’t make much of a dent.

The Academy has 17 branches; actors nominate actors, editors nominate editors, and so on; the entire eligible membership votes on final Oscars.

Four days after the Jan. 14 announcement of nominations, Boone Isaacs issued a statement saying there would be “dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership.” She did not give details at the time.

[jo]

A 2012 study showed that the membership is overwhelmingly male, white, and an average age of 62! This was the feature story that came out of that study.

www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/oscars/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html

From the Archives
Unmasking Oscar: Academy voters are overwhelmingly white and male


By John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith•Contact Reporter

February 19, 2012, 5:00 AM



The 2016 Academy Awards nominations were announced Jan. 14, and for the second year in a row all acting nominees were white. The lack of diversity, despite strong minority contenders, has renewed criticism and reenergized the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, first created after last year's nominees were announced. Four years ago, The Times investigated the make up of the Academy in depth.

When the names of winners are revealed on Oscar night, months of suspense give way to tears, smiles and speeches. Yet when the curtain falls, one question remains: Who cast the votes?


About 37 million people tuned in to the Academy Awards last year, and a great deal rides on the show's outcome. Winning a golden statuette can vault an actor to stardom, add millions to a movie's box office and boost a studio's prestige. Yet the roster of all 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a closely guarded secret.

Even inside the movie industry, intense speculation surrounds the academy's composition and how that influences who gets nominated for and wins Oscars. The organization does not publish a membership list.



"I have to tell you," said academy member Viola Davis, nominated for lead actress this year for "The Help." "I don't even know who is a member of the academy."

A Los Angeles Times study found that academy voters are markedly less diverse than the moviegoing public, and even more monolithic than many in the film industry may suspect. Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male, The Times found. Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%.

Oscar voters have a median age of 62, the study showed. People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.

The academy calls itself "the world's preeminent movie-related organization" of "the most accomplished men and women working in cinema," and its membership includes some of the brightest lights in the film business — Tom Hanks, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, among others. The roster also features actors far better known for their television acting, such as Erik Estrada from "CHiPs," Jaclyn Smith of "Charlie's Angels" and "The Love Boat's" Gavin MacLeod.




The academy is primarily a group of working professionals, and nearly 50% of the academy's actors have appeared on screen in the last two years. But membership is generally for life, and hundreds of academy voters haven't worked on a movie in decades.

Some are people who have left the movie business entirely but continue to vote on the Oscars — including a nun, a bookstore owner and a retired Peace Corps recruiter. Under academy rules, their votes count the same as ballots cast by the likes of Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio.




To conduct the study, Times reporters spoke with thousands of academy members and their representatives — and reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies — to confirm the identities of more than 5,100 voters — more than 89% of the voting members. Those interviews revealed varying opinions about the academy's race, sex and age breakdown: Some members see it simply as a mirror of hiring patterns in Hollywood, while others say it reflects the group's mission to recognize achievement rather than promote diversity. Many said the academy should be much more representative.




The Times found that some of the academy's 15 branches are almost exclusively white and male. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of every academy branch except actors, whose roster is 88% white. The academy's executive branch is 98% white, as is its writers branch.

Men compose more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Of the academy's 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.

"You would think that in this day and age, there would be a little bit more equality across the board, but that's not the case," said Nancy Schreiber, one of a handful of women among the cinematography branch's 206 voting members. "Being a cinematographer should not be gender-based, and it's ridiculous that it is."

Academy leaders including President Tom Sherak and Chief Executive Dawn Hudson said they have been trying to diversify the membership but that change is difficult because the film industry is not very diverse, and slow because the academy has been limiting membership growth for the last decade.

"We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job," said writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, a longtime academy governor. But "we start off with one hand tied behind our back.... If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it's very hard for us to diversify our membership."





Independent studies of some film crafts show that the academy's demographics mirror the industry's. Women make up 19% of the academy's screenwriting branch, and a 2011 analysis by the Writers Guild of America, West found that women accounted for 17% of film writers employment.


The academy's producers branch is about 18% female, and the directors branch is 9% female, figures comparable to those in a study by San Diego State University's Martha Lauzen. She examined the 250 top-grossing movies of 2011 and found that women accounted for 25% of all of the films' producers, and 5% of all their directors.


"Is most of commercial narrative filmmaking the product of mostly white men? Sadly, the answer is yes," said Alexander Payne, the director and co-writer of best picture nominee "The Descendants" who belongs to the director branch.

Frank Pierson, a former academy president who won an Oscar for original screenplay for "Dog Day Afternoon" in 1976, said merit is the primary criterion for membership.


"I don't see any reason why the academy should represent the entire American population. That's what the People's Choice Awards are for," said Pierson, who still serves on the board of governors. "We represent the professional filmmakers, and if that doesn't reflect the general population, so be it."




Some academy members, though, believe the organization should do more to reflect the demographics of the nation. Denzel Washington, who won the lead actor award for 2001's "Training Day," said the academy needs to "open it up" and "balance" its membership.

"If the country is 12% black, make the academy 12% black," Washington said. "If the nation is 15% Hispanic, make the academy 15% Hispanic. Why not?"





A frequent criticism

Questions about the academy's diversity, or lack thereof, have persisted for years. In 1996, the Rev. Jesse Jackson organized nationwide protests over the absence of black and minority Oscar nominees, claiming it was evidence of "race exclusion and cultural violence" in Hollywood. The question came to the fore again last year, when not a single minority was among the 45 people nominated for actor, actress, supporting actor and actress, director and original and adapted screenplay.

In the past 83 years of Oscars, less than 4% of the acting awards have been bestowed on African Americans. Only one woman — Kathryn Bigelow — has received the Academy Award for directing "The Hurt Locker."

After the 2011 ceremony was staged without a single black male presenter, actor Samuel L. Jackson complained in an email to The Times: "It's obvious there's not ONE Black male actor in Hollywood that's able to read a teleprompter, or that's 'hip enuf,' for the new academy demographic!"

Asked about the diversity of Oscar presenters, Sherak said officials did not instruct this year's ceremony producers, Brian Grazer and Don Mischer, to include more minorities. "Producers produce the show, end of subject," he said. Past Oscar hosts have included African Americans Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg, and Eddie Murphy was initially slated to host this year's broadcast.

Age and gender have also prompted questions. Sony Pictures executives said last year that they believed their Facebook film "The Social Network" lost the best picture race to "The King's Speech" because older Oscar voters didn't relate to the Internet story. This year, some believe that Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" made the best picture shortlist because it appealed to middle-aged men.

"The film is about men trying to be good fathers, sons trying to be good sons," said Terry Press, a member of the public relations branch who for years has helped mount Oscar campaigns for filmmakers. "It's about unfulfilled conversations with your father and that's an extremely middle-aged man thing. It's like 'Field of Dreams.'"

African American actress and academy member Alfre Woodard, 59, cited the sexually explicit "Shame," which got no nominations, as an example of a film whose Oscar hopes may have been doomed by the academy's demographics. "Maybe if the median age was 45 to 50, a film like 'Shame' might show up, which I thought was a brilliantly rendered piece but a subject matter that you don't expect a certain older demographic would flock to see," she said.

Woodard, who joined the organization in 1985 and has been active on academy committees, said she often encourages women to apply for membership in the academy, believing the best way to effect change is from within. "It's like sitting out an election," she said. "The country is only going toward its ideals when people participate."

But others have lost patience. Academy member Bill Duke, a black actor and director, said: "The black community sees the academy as an entity that ignores the needs, wants, desires and representation of black directors, producers, actors and writers. Whether it is true or not, that is how it's perceived — as an elitist group with no concern or regard for the minority community and industry. And there doesn't seem to be any desire to change that perception."





Some academy critics believe the organization, through its membership and Oscar picks, reinforces a lack of diversity on screen and in studio decision-making.

"People of color are always peripheral," said veteran African American character actor Bernie Casey ("Under Siege"), who said he recently quit the academy because he was disenchanted with its racial makeup. "Asians, Latinos, black people — you never see them. We are 320 million people in America and about 48 million black people and the same of Latin descent — but you would not believe that based on what you see in films and television shows."




This year, several minorities did land nominations in the acting categories: Davis and her fellow cast member from "The Help," supporting actress nominee Octavia Spencer, and Demián Bichir, a Mexican-born performer who starred in "A Better Life." All of the year's five nominated directors are white men, and none of the 21 producers of the nine best picture nominees is a person of color.

Were there more Latino academy members, Bichir said, opportunities for Latinos would improve. "That would mean there would be a lot more roles for Latin actors," the actor said, "and a lot more movies for [Latin] cinematographers."




Growth and change

The academy was founded in 1927 with two aims: to mediate labor disputes and improve the movie industry's image. Louis B. Mayer, the legendary head of MGM, initiated the idea and invited an elite cadre of professionals, including actress and United Artists studio co-founder Mary Pickford, director Cecil B. DeMille and producer Irving Thalberg, to join.

The academy's membership grew steadily over the years as the organization moved away from labor management issues to focus on film preservation, research and the Oscars, first presented in 1929 in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Today, the academy oversees more than $196 million in assets and dispenses more than $20 million in grants and scholarships a year, including to Streetlights, a job training and placement group that works to promote ethnic diversity in Hollywood. It donates $750,000 annually to film festivals around the country and sponsors an annual screenwriting competition that rewards winners with $35,000 fellowships. According to its tax filing for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the Oscars generated $81.3 million in total revenue for the organization.

The academy grew rapidly between 1990 and 2000, adding close to 800 members. Former executive director Bruce Davis alerted the board to the steep increase and noted there had not been a commensurate growth in the film business. The organization attributed the membership surge to a relaxed attitude toward admission.

"The guilds are a democracy. If you have credits, nobody asks how good you were," said Davis, the executive director from 1989 to 2011. "But the academy has to be different."




In response, the organization in 2004 began limiting membership growth to 30 per year, not including those admitted to fill vacancies created by deaths, resignations or retirement. It also clarified and stiffened its policies for admittance. The available slots are allocated among the 15 branches and the academy's at-large division.

There are three ways to become a candidate for membership: land an Oscar nomination; apply and receive a recommendation from two members of a branch; or earn an endorsement from the branch's membership committee or the academy staff.

The membership committees then vote on the candidates; those who get a majority are invited to join. The academy says almost everyone accepts the offer.

Actors, for example, now must have three significant credits to be considered for membership, and producers need two solo producing credits or the equivalent. Such criteria benefit people with more experience. "The academy is always going to be slightly older — if just because you have to have about five years of credits before you're even considered," said Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner for visual effects.

In practice, the bar for admittance varies widely from branch to branch. Last year, actress Rooney Mara and visual effects supervisor Tim Burke were among 178 invitees academy wide. Mara had had small roles in "The Social Network" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (she had yet to star in her current Oscar-nominated role in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"). Burke, in contrast, had won an Academy Award a decade earlier for his work on "Gladiator."





The academy began making public the names of its invitees in 2004, but does not say which ones accept and become members.

The more than 1,000 people invited to join since 2004 include black actors such as Jennifer Hudson, Mo'Nique and Jeffrey Wright. But overall, the group was only slightly more diverse than the academy it was joining — 89% white and 73% male. Sherak pointed out that in 2011, the invitees were 30% female and 10% nonwhite.


The academy's overall composition before and after the 2004 policy shift remained close to 93% Caucasian and 76% male, and its median age dropped from 64 to 62.





As part of the 2003 tightening of membership rules, Davis urged that a wider circle of potential invitees be considered. In 2009, he suggested to the sound branch committee that it had overlooked India's Resul Pookutty, who won an Oscar that year for sound mixing on "Slumdog Millionaire." Davis admired the technician's work and was moved by his emotional acceptance speech on Oscar night. (The committee extended the invitation a year later.)

"When I got the letter from them saying they would like to invite me into the academy, I was literally screaming in the studio," said Pookutty, who flew from Mumbai to Los Angeles to attend the new member luncheon. "It means a great deal. More than the pride of it, I feel that my whole fraternity in India has been recognized and honored."

Sherak and other academy officials said they're eager for more applications from women and minorities, and more involvement from those who are already members.

"I'm hoping your story runs and 7,000 phone calls break the lines here," Sherak said. "We've been trying to reach out to the constituency and we're looking for help. You want to be on a committee? Tell us what committee. If you are sitting waiting for us to find your name in our make-believe book and we are going to call you, we are not going to do that. Come to us, we'll get you in. We want you in. That would help us a lot."


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Times staff writers Jasmine Elist, Deborah Vankin, Reed Johnson and Emily Rome contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2016, Los Angeles Times

[jo]

I am probably biased, but Hugh would probably have had better chances to win the Oscar vs DDLewis if the membership had reflected a more balanced representation.

Russell Crowe, while known to be a close professional colleague of Hugh is also generally perceived as a blunt person. He shared this re how he voted and why --

Jackman's Les Miserables co-star Russell Crowe announced via Twitter he has voted for Jackman, declaring his performance in the musical as more difficult than Day-Lewis's portrayal of US President Abraham Lincoln.

"Voted Hugh Jackman as Best Actor for the Oscars," Crowe tweeted.

"The character arc, the degree of difficulty, way more responsibility than any other nominee."

Subsequently, he must have been prevailed upon to delete his tweet! Maybe there are rules from the AMPAS about publicly disclosing one's preferences.



A lot of inside info was shared on IMDB by someone whose parents were both AMPAS (Oscar) and BAFTA members -- he did share about perceived membership biases ( such as a fan club for Meryl Streep, among them) and also about the practices to woo the voters. This came about during the active exchanges on IMDB during the filming and release of Les Miserables as well as the awards season which immediately succeeded the film release and coincided with the discussions. Interestingly, we were also joined on IMDB for a brief time by Simon Hayes, the Oscar winner for his SOUND MIXING work in Les Miserables while the film was being readied for release -- he did share some technical details with us on the process for which he was acknowledged by the AMPAS voters.

Jo

[jo]

The New York Times gives its analysis of the impact of the proposed changes at AMPAS --

www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/business/media/oscars-diversity-academy-voting-rules.html?hpw&rref=movies&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

Academy Board Endorses Changes to Increase Diversity in Oscar Nominees and Itself


By MICHAEL CIEPLY

JAN. 22, 2016


LOS ANGELES — Confronting a fierce protest over a second straight year of all-white Oscar acting nominations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Friday that it would make radical changes to its voting requirements, recruiting process and governing structure, with an aim toward increasing the diversity of its membership.

The changes were approved at an unusual special meeting of the group’s 51-member governing board Thursday night. The session ended with a unanimous vote to endorse the new processes, but action on possible changes to Oscar balloting was deferred for later consideration. The board said its goal was to double the number of female and minority members by 2020.

“The academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” the academy’s president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said in a statement. Ms. Isaacs referred to an often-repeated complaint that the academy, in its lack of diversity, reflects the demographics of a film industry that for years has been primarily white and male.





The most striking of the changes is a requirement that the voting status of both new and current members be reviewed every 10 years.

Voting status may be revoked for those who have not been active in the film business in a decade. But members who have had three 10-year terms will have lifetime voting rights, as will those who have won or been nominated for an Academy Award.

The academy’s membership is made up of roughly 6,200 movie professionals around the world, and it was not immediately clear how many would be purged from the voting rolls by the new rule.

The changes, and possible balloting adjustments, will not affect this year’s awards, which will be presented on Feb. 28.






In the short term, the new rules and processes may tamp down some of the criticism that resulted when no film focusing primarily on minority characters was among this year’s eight best picture nominees, and all 20 acting nominees were white.

Ava DuVernay, who was not nominated last year for her direction of the best picture nominee “Selma,” declined to comment on the changes, but tweeted the academy’s letter, and added, “One good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color + women artists.”


But the moves by the academy, which aims to replace older members with a younger, more diverse group, are certain to be met with some criticism, and perhaps resistance. Academy voting rights rank among Hollywood’s more coveted marks of status, not least because of the screening invitations and flattering attention that come with them.

“I’m squarely in what I would call the mentorship phase of my life,” said Sam Weisman, a member of the academy’s directors’ branch since 1998. While working steadily in television, he has not had a feature directing credit since “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star” in 2003.

“I judge the Nicholl fellowships and the Student Academy Awards, but am I not qualified to vote?” asked Mr. Weisman, referring to academy mentorship programs in which he has been involved.





The academy will also expand its governing board by adding three new seats. Those are to be filled by the group’s president with an eye toward increasing the number of women and minorities on the board. Currently, about a third of the board members are women and Ms. Isaacs is its only African-American.

In a parallel move, the academy will add new members from diverse backgrounds to its various committees.

Stephanie Allain, a producer of “Beyond the Lights” (2014) and “Hustle & Flow” (2005) and a member of the academy, said she was elated, especially with the addition of three members to Board of Governors who, she assumed, would be women or people of color.

“The world is watching, basically, so what are we going to do?” said Ms. Allain, who is black. “Are we going to do the right thing? And I think that we have.”

Many in the industry say that especially in the studio world, opportunities have been slower to come to female filmmakers, an imbalance that the academy’s proposed expansion is unlikely to fix.

“The academy is the endgame,” Ms. Allain said. “But the beginning of the game is the industry responding to the curated talent that comes through programs like Film Independent, the folks that go through the Sundance Film Festival and the LA Film Festival. They just need jobs. That’s how we’re really going to solve the problem — not by more programs or committees, but by jobs.”





Without providing details, the academy’s statement also said it would “supplement the traditional process” by which members are recruited — an invitation process meant to focus on achievement — with “an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity.”

One person briefed on the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality strictures, said the supplemental recruiting would be a year-round process, and would be heavily influenced by staff and officers rather than traditional membership committees. While Will Smith, who was overlooked as a nominee for his role in “Concussion,” has said he will not attend this year’s ceremony, Charlotte Rampling, who was nominated for best actress for “45 Years,” condemned much of the protest on Friday as being “racist against whites.”

“One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list,” Ms. Rampling said in an interview with the French radio network Europe 1 that was done before the academy made its announcement.






Still far from certain is whether the voting changes, and further possible tweaks to the Oscar ballot — for instance a return to the 10-film field of best picture nominees used in 2010 and 2011 — will restore the more diverse set of nominations that prevailed in the decade leading to the choice of “12 Years a Slave” as best picture in 2014.

In those 10 years, 24 of the 200 acting nominees were black, approximately matching the proportion of blacks in the North American movie audience and population, according to statistics compiled by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Black actors who won Oscars during that period included Octavia Spencer for “The Help,” Mo’Nique for “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” Jennifer Hudson for “Dreamgirls” and Jamie Foxx for “Ray.” When Mr. Foxx won, in 2005, he was also nominated for best supporting actor for his role in “Collateral.”

In 2014, Lupita Nyong’o was named best supporting actress for her role in “12 Years a Slave,” John Ridley won an Oscar for writing its adapted screenplay, and Steve McQueen, who is also black, was nominated as the film’s director, but lost to Alfonso Cuarón, who is Mexican. Last year’s best director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, is also Mexican.

Last year, however, along with Ms. DuVernay being left out, David Oyelowo was not nominated for his critically acclaimed role as Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma.”





This year’s shutout of minority actors caused particular outrage among those who had believed Mr. Smith might be nominated, or perhaps Michael B. Jordan for his role in “Creed” or Idris Elba as a supporting actor for “Beasts of No Nation.” The director of “Creed,” Ryan Coogler, who is black, was also overlooked.

“Straight Outta Compton” faced a tougher climb in the acting categories, because its young cast was an ensemble, with no obvious leads. But the film has been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award, and for a best film award from the Producers Guild of America.

“I think it’s completely ridiculous to bring in ethnicity to the evaluation of creative performances and filmmaking and acting,” said Kieth Merrilll, 75, who won an Oscar in 1974 for his documentary “The Great American Cowboy” and was nominated in 1998 for best documentary short. He also noted that he had an adopted black daughter and four black grandchildren. “We’re supposed to be evaluating talent in categories, and one of the categories is ‘What is their ethnicity?’ To make it one of the categories is ridiculous.”





The speed and breadth of the board’s Thursday night action surprised even some academy insiders, who at midweek were predicting no action until a regularly scheduled board meeting on Tuesday, and who were strongly playing down any steps to trim the voting rights of older members.

How the academy deals with the intricacies of “activity” in the film business may raise complex questions, said Mr. Weisman, the director. If, like Mr. Weisman, a director has had development deals that did not result in a film, will he be ruled inactive? Will writers who have generated scripts that were not bought, or made, likewise lose privileges? Might a cagey executive put a dormant publicist on low-cost retainer during Oscar season, protecting and perhaps influencing that member’s vote?

In its statement on Friday, the academy said those members who are moved to emeritus status because they have not met the new activity criteria would not pay dues, but would continue to enjoy the privileges of membership other than voting.

Correction: January 22, 2016
An earlier version of this article misidentified the Oscar-winning director in 2014, It was Alfonso Cuarón, not Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Cara Buckley contributed reporting from Park City, Utah; Rachel Donadio from Paris; and Lorne Manly from New York.

[njr]

No way I could read all that stuff you posted, but I will say, it could be worse. Hugh could be black!

Nancy