The first wave of Oscar movies has arrived: “Steve Jobs.” “Bridge of Spies.” “The Walk.” “Truth.” “Room.”
Dud. Flop. Bomb. Stinker. Bust.
This is shaping up to be one of the most pathetic awards seasons in many years, with highly-touted pictures featuring hot topics and A-list talent failing to gain the kind of audience traction studios hope will keep a movie in the conversation until January, when Oscar ballots are finally mailed out.
Five years ago, “The Social Network,” a buzzy story about a tech guru written by Aaron Sorkin, earned $22 million on its opening weekend on the way to a $96 million domestic gross. By contrast, the similar fast-talking Sorkin movie “Steve Jobs,” which received comparable critical acclaim, is already fading fast, having earned a limp $7.1 million its first weekend in wide release.
The stodgy Cold War spy drama “Bridge of Spies,” meanwhile, starring Tom Hanks as a lawyer who negotiates the swap of a Soviet spy for a pair of Americans, is doing even worse than Spielberg and Hanks’ notorious 2004 underperformer “The Terminal.” That film brought in $77 million, while “Bridge” has taken in just $33 million in its first 10 days.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
Meanwhile, “Forrest Gump” and “Back to the Future” director Robert Zemeckis’ much-praised “The Walk,” which unlike the other two films at least offers the dazzling 3-D spectacle of a man walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974, did worse than either, having brought in only $10 million. It’s nearing the end of its theatrical run.
“Truth” and “Room” are doing still worse than any of the above; the former, Robert Redford’s Dan Rather drama focusing on the story behind a “60 Minutes II” tale that turned out to rely on forged documents about George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era military service, has grossed a laughable $200,000 in its first two weekends in limited release. “Room,” about a mother and son forced to live in a garden shed for years, is barely doing any better with $400,000 in the till while playing 23 engagements. (“Steve Jobs” earned more than that in a single weekend while playing in only four cinemas.)
Of this fall’s serious pictures, only “Black Mass” has managed to crack the $50 million mark, seemingly giving Johnny Depp an excellent shot at a Best Actor nod, but the film doesn’t appear to be well-liked enough to earn a lot of other nominations.
Artsy limited releases hoping to gradually expand and play for time until the Golden Globe nominations give them a boost on Dec. 10 are going to struggle to find space in multiplexes when the November blockbusters arrive: “Spectre” and “The Peanuts Movie” are due Nov. 6; “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” hits Nov. 20; and the new Pixar film “The Good Dinosaur” debuts Nov. 25.
True, there is no minimum gross for Oscar hopefuls: Last year’s best picture winner “Birdman” earned only $42 million, and winners of other major awards, such as “Boyhood,” “Whiplash” and “Still Alice,” took in just $13 to $25 million in North America. Marion Cotillard managed to snag a Best Actress nomination even though her film “Two Days, One Night” grossed only $1.4 million.
Still, Hollywood has a short memory, and nothing gets you forgotten faster than failure. The Oscar ballot so far is mostly blank, with plenty of space for the next wave of hopefuls: the 1950s lesbian love story “Carol,” Eddie Redmayne’s transgender story “The Danish Girl,” David O. Russell’s Jennifer Lawrence drama “Joy,” Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” Will Smith’s football movie “Concussion,” and “The Revenant,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
By the time all of them have hit theaters, “Bridge of Spies” may seem as if it happened as long ago as the Cold War.