Happy Hump Day!
The awards nominations just keep rolling in as Film Independent announced its nominations for what is lovingly referred to as the “Indie Spirits.” Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter (hitting theaters this Friday) and Mike Mills‘ C’mon, C’mon received the most nominations by being nominated for Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, while Lauren Hadaway‘s The Novice (also in theaters this Friday and Janicza Bravo‘s Zola also did well as the two other films nominated for Best Feature and Director. A Chira was the fifth nominee for Best Feature.
Zola was the only Best Feature nominee to receive a nomination for its cinematography by Ari Wegner, who is also expected to get an Oscar nomination for her work on Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog. The other cinematography nominees were Ante Cheng & Matthew Chuang for Blue Bayou; Lol Crawley for The Humans, Tim Curtin for A Chiara, and Edu Grau for Passing. Film Independent also gives out awards for Editing, and those nominees were Affonso Gonçalves for A Chiara; Ali Greer for The Nowhere Inn, Lauren Hadaway & Nathan Nugent for The Novice; Joi McMillon for Zola; and Enrico Natale for The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain. Oddly, neither of the leads for The Lost Daughter (Olivia Colman) or C’mon, C’mon (Joaquin Phoenix) — both Oscar winners — were nominated for their roles in those acclaimed films. Jessie Buckley was nominated for the former for her supporting role.
Fran Kranz‘s moving drama, Mass, and its amazing cast of Kagen Albright, Reed Birney, Michelle N. Carter, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Breeda Wool, AND the movie’s Casting Directors Henry Russell Bergstein and Allison Estrin will receive this year’s Robert Altman Award.
Also, the Critics Choice Association (CCA) — a group of which I’m a member — also announced its nominations earlier this week with a lot of crossover with the Golden Globes nominations announced earlier on Monday. Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast and Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story led the nominations with 11 apiece followed by Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune and Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog. Those four films’ directors all received nominations in that category, joined by Guillermo del Toro (Nightmare Alley) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), and let’s face it. Those six movies are the ones that are most likely vying for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. At least those first four films also received nominations in the actor and screenplay categories. The other movies that received Best Picture nominations from the CCA were Sian Heder‘s CODA, Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up, King Richard, and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s directorial debut, tick tick… BOOM!
The Critics Choice also offers a whole slew of below-the-line awards, although don’t expect any of those winners to be announced during the live television ceremony on Jan. 9, 2022. You can read those nominees below, and you can probably expect many of them to receive Oscar nods as well.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Bruno Delbonnel – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Greig Fraser – Dune
Janusz Kaminski – West Side Story
Dan Laustsen – Nightmare Alley
Ari Wegner – The Power of the Dog
Haris Zambarloukos – Belfast
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Jim Clay, Claire Nia Richards – Belfast
Tamara Deverell, Shane Vieau – Nightmare Alley
Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo – The French Dispatch
Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo – West Side Story
Patrice Vermette, Zsuzsanna Sipos – Dune
BEST EDITING
Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn – West Side Story
Úna Ní Dhonghaíle – Belfast
Andy Jurgensen – Licorice Pizza
Peter Sciberras – The Power of the Dog
Joe Walker – Dune
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Jenny Beavan – Cruella
Luis Sequeira – Nightmare Alley
Paul Tazewell – West Side Story
Jacqueline West, Robert Morgan – Dune
Janty Yates – House of Gucci
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
Cruella
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Nightmare Alley
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Dune
The Matrix Resurrections
Nightmare Alley
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
By the way, if you read that last item and thought, “I haven’t seen half of these movies!” then you’ll want to check out Neil Turitz‘s The Accidental Tourist column later today where he addresses that particular holiday break phenom where everyone is trying to catch up on awards movies but often don’t even know where to start.
There wasn’t a ton of movie news this week, although there were a lot of movie release moves for 2022. Sony Pictures moved the Brad Pitt-led action movie, Bullet Train, directed by David Leitch, and the Hello Sunshine drama, Where the Crawdads Sing, to July 15 and 22, respectively. Bullet Train was originally supposed to be released on April 8, while Crawdads had an earlier summer release on June 24. There doesn’t seem to be too much rhyme or reason to the moves since both movies have competition on both their previous and new dates. Sony also dated the Screen Gems thriller, The Bride, for August 26, 2022.
Universal Pictures decided to move Michael Bay‘s action movie, Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza Gonzalez, into that April 8 slot vacated by Bullet Train. Now, that movie will be going up against Paramount Pictures‘ Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Paramount also started moving things, shifting its Jennifer Lopez–Owen Wilson rom-com, Marry Me, onto its Paramount+ streaming platform. All three of those had recently debuted trailers, so we’ll just have to wait a few months longer to see them.
None other than Tom Hanks will be appearing Taylor Sheridan‘s Paramount+ Yellowstone prequel, 1883, no less in a flashback to the Battle of Antietam in the second episode, playing General George Meade. The series also stars Tim McGraw as
Shortly after releasing the trailer for Season 3 of M. Night Shyamalan‘s Servant, Apple TV+ announced that the thriller series would be getting a fourth season.
Staying with Apple, it has won the auction for Mark Protosevich‘s genre-bending series, Sugar, with actor Colin Farrell attached. Plot is being kept under wraps for the series by a writer from Thor and I Am Legend, but it’s a contemporary L.A. private detective story exec. produced by Farrell and Prostosevich with Genre Films’ Simon Kinberg and Audrey Chon, as well as Scott Greenberg. Kinsberg’s other Apple TV+ series, Invasion, which he co-created, writes and EPs with David Weil has also been renewed for a second season.
Deadline reports that Amazon has won the small screen rights to the Olivia Blake fantasy novel, The Atlas Six, which went viral on TikTok earlier this year. Amazon is developing the series with the London-based Brightstar, founded by The Crown producer Tanya Seghatchian and Cold War producer John Woodward. The book, written by Alexene Farol Follmuthwhich under a pseudonym, is about six magicians selected to earn a place in a powerful secret society. It was originally self-published via Kindle Digital Publishing but went viral with over 11M mentions on social media site TikTok. That began a major publishing bidding war which Tor won to publish a revised edition this past March. Follmuth’s second book will be released in the fall of 2022, and she’ll exec. produce the series with Seghatchian and Woodward.
Also from Deadline, Meaghan Rath (Hawaii Five-0) and Jack Cutmore-Scott (Deception) are leading and exec. producing the single-camera romantic workplace comedy Wouldn’t It be In Nice, which is in development at CBS Studios for CBS. It’s written by Kristen Bartlett (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee) and will be directed by James Griffiths (Black-ish, Stumptown), inspired by Cutmore-Scott’s family wedding business in the UK. The series is set at Walnut Hill on the Water, a small family-run wedding venue in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and it centers around Georgina (Rath) and Nick (Cutmore-Scott), “two co-managers who both wish they were a solo act. Together with their dedicated but dysfunctional staff, they work each week to set aside their hatred for each other and celebrate couples in love. The show is a celebration of partnerships – in love, business, and friendship – and how it often takes a messy collision of opposite worlds and opposite brains to make something truly special.” Rath, Cutmore-Scott, and Bartlett executive produce along with Griffiths, and his head of development Brett Pirtle at their Fee-Fi-Fo Films.
Francine Pascal‘s Sweet Valley High books are being developed by Gossip Girl adaptors Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage‘s Fake Empire to add to their YA portfolio at the CW with a new series, to be called simply, Sweet Valley. Pascal’s books were initially adapted for television and the CW predecessor UPN in 1994, that series, called Sweet Valley High, running four seasons. Sweet Valley will be a co-production between ViacomCBS siblings CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios. Ashley Wigfield, who wrote and produced the HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot, will also write the new series.
Switching to reality, actress Eva Longoria will be headlining the CNN+ spin-off, Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico, which is derived from Stanley Tucci‘s Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy travelogue series set in… you guessed it… Italy.
In a statement, Longoria said, “Partnering with CNN on a culinary-driven expedition throughout Mexico is a dream come true. I am so proud of my Mexican American roots and can’t wait to bring the hidden gems of Mexico to the world through Searching for Mexico. I am a huge fan of Stanley’s journey throughout Italy; he set the bar high, and I can’t wait for everyone to fall in love with the magic of Mexico.”
We have two very trailers today, starting with the trailer for Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan‘s second feature, Everything Everywhere All At Once, which will be released by A24 on March 25, 2022, following its Opening Night premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 11 in Austin. The new movie from the directors of Swiss Army Man is a sci-fi comedy starring Michelle Yeoh (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) as a woman trying to finish her taxes.
The other trailer we have to share today is an animated action-comedy called The Bad Guys from DreamWorks Animation, which features the voices of Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, Awkwafina, Richard Ayoade, Zazie Beetz, Lilly Singh, and Alex Borstein. The Bad Guys is based on Aaron Blabey‘s best-selling Scholastic book series, and it’s directed by Pierre Perifel, animator from the Kung Fu Panda films, making his feature directorial debut. Universal will release the movie on April 22, 2022.
That’s it for today, back on Friday for the weekly End of Week Production Notes.
