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      ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Is Big Winner at the Oscars

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      In the late 1960s, young cineastes shook up a moribund film industry by delivering idiosyncratic, startlingly original work. The moment became known as New Hollywood.When film historians look back at the 95th Academy Awards, they may mark it as the start of a new New Hollywood. Voters honored A24’s head-twisting, sex toy-brandishing, TikTok-era “Everything Everywhere All at Once” with the Oscar for best picture — along with six other awards — while naming Netflix’s German-language war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” the winner in four categories, including best international film.The Daniels, the young filmmaking duo behind the racially diverse “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” won Oscars for their original screenplay and directing. (The Daniels is an oh-so-cool sobriquet for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. They are both 35.) The film, which received a field-leading 11 nominations, also won Oscars for film editing, best actress and best supporting actor and actress, with Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis honored for their performances.“Ladies, don’t let anybody ever tell you that you are ever past your prime,” Yeoh, 60, said when accepting the best actress Oscar. “Never give up.” She was the first Asian woman to receive the award.Clip Courtesy A.M.P.A.S.© 2023Quan’s win provided the Academy Awards with a hall-of-fame comeback story: After early success in movies like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” his acting career grew so cold that he turned to stunt work. “Dreams are something you have to believe in,” Quan said as tears streamed down his face and A-list attendees gave him a standing ovation. “I almost gave up on mine. To everyone out there, please keep your dreams alive.”Curtis was also in tears by the time she reached the fiery conclusion of her acceptance speech. “To all of the people who have supported the genre movies that I have made for all these years,” she said, “the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together!”Clip Courtesy A.M.P.A.S.© 2023The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread nominations remarkably far and wide this year. Two blockbuster sequels, “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” made the best picture cut. So did the little-seen art films “Triangle of Sadness,” “Women Talking” and “Tár.” Voters also made room for a musical (“Elvis”) and a memory piece (“The Fabelmans”). In some ways, spreading nominations widely reflected the jumbled state of Hollywood. No one in the movie capital seems to know which end is up, with streaming services like Netflix hot then not, and studios unsure about how many films to release in theaters and whether anything but superheroes, sequels and horror stories can succeed. Over the weekend, “Scream VI” was the top movie at the North American box office, with an estimated $44.5 million in ticket sales.First-time nominees filled 16 of the 20 acting slots, with new stars like Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”), Paul Mescal (“Aftersun”) and Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) honored for breakthrough roles.But first-time acting nominations also went to Hollywood stalwarts like Curtis, Yeoh and Brendan Fraser. To some degree, the inclusion of Quan, Curtis, Fraser and Yeoh was seen as redemption for Hollywood: All had somehow been cast to the side at some point over their careers.An overcome Fraser, who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance as an obese professor in “The Whale,” thanked Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, “for throwing me a creative lifeline.”Clip Courtesy A.M.P.A.S.© 2023The academy was also trying to balance old and new in the Oscars ceremony itself. The academy’s chief executive had promised a return to the polished, glamorous Oscar ceremonies of the past to recover from last year’s chaotic telecast, when an angry Will Smith walked onstage and slapped Chris Rock. In a change from last year, when eight categories were scuttled to a nontelevised portion, all 23 Oscars were handed out live on air.As host, Jimmy Kimmel arrived on the Oscars stage by parachute, moments after a pair of “Top Gun”-style fighter jets flew over the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles at 345 miles per hour. He then breezed through a self-assured monologue that left the A-listers seated before him cheering in support. He teased Steven Spielberg — gently — for his lack of recreational drug use and Fraser and Quan for once appearing together in “Encino Man.” It was the kind of affable ribbing that once made Billy Crystal the king of the Oscar M.C.’s.The host Jimmy Kimmel arrived on the stage via parachute and breezed through his monologue.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“And if any of you get offended by a joke and decide you want to come up here and get jiggy with it? It’s not going to be easy,” Kimmel said, addressing last year’s slap without directly mentioning Smith. He then joked that people like Michael B. Jordan, the “Creed” star, and Pedro Pascal, who plays the title role in “The Mandalorian,” were prepared to intervene.“Seriously, the academy has a crisis team in place,” Kimmel said. “If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year — nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”As expected, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” received the Oscar for best animated feature, and “Navalny” was honored as best documentary. Less anticipated was Ruth Carter’s win for her “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” costume design. (Most awards handicappers had predicted victory for the “Elvis” costume designer Catherine Martin. Carter also won for “Black Panther” in 2019.)The #OscarsSoWhite outcries from 2015 and 2016, prompted by all-white slates of acting nominees, continue to reverberate at the academy, which has been trying to diversify its membership by race, gender and nationality. Nearly 50 percent of the academy’s most recent class of new members came from overseas. About 25 percent of the academy’s total membership of 10,000 now comes from outside the United States.But the academy was criticized this year for not nominating any women in the best director category. For decades, women and people of color were almost entirely excluded from the directing race. In 2021, for the first time, two women were nominated: Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), with Zhao winning. Last year, Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) won the Oscar for directing.This year, Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”) was left out even though her film was nominated for best picture. (Polley won for her adapted screenplay.) “I give up,” Patty Jenkins, whose directing credits include “Wonder Woman” and “Monster,” told Variety on Saturday about women being shut out of the category. “It’s still going to take a long ways to go. It’s going to take a lot more to really see truly more diverse awards.”The internationalization of the academy was on display among this year’s directing nominees. The Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and the British-born Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) were honored. Joining them were Todd Field (Tár) and the Daniels. Filling out the best director category was Spielberg — a director who was once part of that New Hollywood crew and is now a Hollywood elder statesman with nine total nominations for directing, this one for “The Fabelmans.”The academy emphasized that the ceremony would feel modern — part of an urgent effort to make the telecast more relevant to young people. The 2022 show drew 16.6 million viewers, the second-worst turnout on record after the pandemic-affected 2021 telecast. If the Nielsen ratings do not improve, the academy faces a financial precipice: Most of its revenue comes from the sale of broadcasting rights to the show. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. (The most-viewed Oscars telecast was in 1998, when 57.2 million people watched “Titanic” win the trophy for best picture.)Rihanna performed her nominated song from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Todd Heisler/The New York TimesBig musical stars, including Rihanna and Lady Gaga, sang their nominated songs; Lenny Kravitz performed during the “In Memoriam” segment. The best song Oscar went to “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian film “RRR.” The nominee pool for best picture had never before included more than one billion-dollar ticket seller, according to box office databases, and this year there were two. “Top Gun: Maverick” collected $1.5 billion, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” took in $2.3 billion. (Viewership tends to increase when popular films are nominated.)In another change, the red carpet was not red: Stars walked a champagne-colored rug, breaking with a 62-year tradition. The choice was made as part of an overhaul of the preshow spectacle, which, for the first time, was managed by members of the Met Gala’s creative team. In the days leading up to the Oscars, another in a series of rainstorms soaked Los Angeles, so much so that the academy sent an alert to the news media on Wednesday warning that it may “need to clear the carpet at a moment’s notice.” In the end, the weather cooperated, and it was a sunny 63 degrees. More

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      Inside the ‘Blood Sport’ of Oscars Campaigns

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Depending on how closely you’ve been following the Oscars race this year, you may or may not know the name Andrea Riseborough. Before Jan. 24, few outside of the film industry did. An actress from northeastern England, Riseborough began her career in​ theater and has worked steadily since. At 41, she has appeared in more than 30 films, including “Birdman,” “Battle of the Sexes” and “The Death of Stalin.” People like to say that the only reason she isn’t famous is that she inhabits roles so completely, she becomes unrecognizable. But on Tuesday, Jan. 24, Riseborough was nominated for a best-actress Oscar alongside Cate Blanchett, Michelle Williams, Ana de Armas and Michelle Yeoh. No one predicted Riseborough’s nomination. She did not appear on pundits’ shortlists. There were no profiles of her in glossy magazines. “To Leslie,” the film about an alcoholic West Texas lottery winner for which she was nominated, had earned just $27,322 at the box office.Within 24 hours, the reaction to Riseborough’s nomination went from surprise to scrutiny to backlash. It turned out that a small army of movie stars had championed Riseborough. Charlize Theron, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Paulson and Gwyneth Paltrow hosted screenings. Others praised Riseborough’s performance on social media and beyond, including Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon, Helen Hunt, Patricia Clarkson, Pedro Pascal, Demi Moore, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bradley Whitford, Jane Fonda, Mia Farrow, Kate Winslet, Alan Cumming, Rosanna Arquette and even Blanchett. The campaign was described as organic and grass roots, but some celebrities had posted suspiciously identical language, describing “To Leslie” as “a small film with a giant heart.” That Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) and Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) were not nominated despite predictions to the contrary made it look as if a bunch of actors campaigned on behalf of a white actress, leading to the exclusion of Black actresses.Andrea Riseborough in “To Leslie.”Momentum PicturesThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars’ governing body, opened an investigation. Oscar campaign regulations forbid direct lobbying, and it turned out that some of Riseborough’s supporters, including Mary McCormack, who is married to Michael Morris, the director of “To Leslie,” had encouraged academy members to watch the film and publicly endorse Riseborough’s performance. Cynthia Swartz, an awards strategist working on films including “Tár,” “Elvis,” “Women Talking,” “Till” and “Avatar: The Way of Water,” told me the campaign inspired her to look up the definition of lobbying, which is not comprehensively defined in the academy’s campaign regulations. “I don’t believe academy members should be posting about how they’re going to vote,” Swartz said, “or urging others to vote in a certain way.” Tony Angellotti, a consultant on “The Fabelmans,” put it less mildly. “There are very specific rules about direct outreach,” he said. “Clearly, here, those rules were broken.” Neither the director nor his wife are members of the academy. But consultants I spoke to said it didn’t matter. A couple joked that it was a little like the Jan. 6 insurrection: President Donald Trump may not have personally stormed the Capitol, but he encouraged others to do so.In February, the academy announced that Riseborough’s nomination would stand, promising to clarify its regulations after the awards. But the controversy reminded everyone of the reality of the Oscars: that despite the big show of sealed envelopes being delivered via handcuffed briefcases, the votes — in Hollywood as in Washington, D.C. — are a result of a highly contingent, political process, handed down not from movie gods but from the very people who stand to benefit from it. “To say that Andrea Riseborough took a nomination away from Viola and Danielle, you cannot have this conversation without having the whole conversation,” said a campaign strategist with a film in the race. “You have to look at: ‘OK, well, what money was spent on the other campaigns? And who’s spending it?’ This is just the tip of the iceberg.”Oscar campaigns are often run by professional strategists, essentially a specialized breed of publicist. Their job begins as early as a year before the awards, sometimes before a film is even shot. They advise on which festival a film should premiere at, shape a campaign platform and hope that the film gains enough momentum to propel it into awards season. Sometimes several strategists work on a single film, and the war room of an Oscars campaign can grow to be as many as 10 or 20 people. All the stops along the campaign trail — screenings, events, other award shows — are an opportunity to workshop talking points and gauge the competition. And unlike the Golden Globes, which are voted on by 199 entertainment journalists, the Oscars electorate is a voting body of about 10,000 industry peers, which is nearly double what it was before the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that began in 2015.The Oscars race is split into Phases 1 and 2: before and after the nominations, which is akin to the divide between the presidential primaries and the general election. “Phase 2 is all about honing your narrative and defining yourself in the race,” Lea Yardum, who is working with a couple best-picture nominees this year, told me. “Some narratives form themselves but others are — I don’t want to say crafted by us, but they form themselves and we amplify them.”Think about everything you know about this year’s Oscar nominees and, chances are, it was proliferated by an awards consultant. “Top Gun: Maverick” saved the movie business with its nearly $1.5 billion at the box office. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the exuberant sci-fi romp that created some much-needed opportunities for Asian American actors. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is the biggest antiwar film ever (despite still technically being a war film). Vote for “The Fabelmans” if you love Spielberg and the movies and “Tár” if you want to go with the unanimous critics’ pick.“Every year, everyone goes into a campaign armed with statistics — oh, the statistics!” Yardum told me. An Asian actress has never been up for an Oscar, so vote for Michelle Yeoh: It’s her time. Did you know Jamie Lee Curtis has never been nominated? She’s due. Spielberg hasn’t won a best picture Oscar since 1994. Is it helpful to know what gas prices were the last time he won? (A strategist has that handy: $1.11 a gallon!) Narratives don’t always work, but a good narrative can triumph over a bad movie. Just consider the moving comeback of Brendan Fraser, who was nominated for his performance in “The Whale,” a movie that was panned by critics.Negative narratives are usually attributed to the diabolical workings of rival strategists: the stories about abusive directors, overblown budgets, whether the real people behind biopics should really be celebrated. (See: “A Beautiful Mind.”) “They try to change someone else’s narrative by adding dirt to the layer,” Angellotti told me, citing the old rumor that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn’t really write “Good Will Hunting.” A more recent example that strategists still talk about is when “Green Book” was up for best picture in 2019. The week the nomination ballots went out, a story resurfaced about the director of the movie, Peter Farrelly, and a joke he used to play 20 years earlier that involved exposing himself. (Farrelly apologized the same day.) The film still won, but many believe another best-picture campaign planted the story.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Asian Actors: A record number of actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year. But historically, Asian stars have rarely been part of the awards.Hong Chau Interview: In a conversation with The Times, the actress, who is nominated for her supporting role in “The Whale,” says she still feels like an underdog.Andrea Riseborough Controversy: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why the “To Leslie” star’s nod was controversial.The Making of ‘Naatu Naatu’: The composers and choreographer from the Indian blockbuster “RRR” explain how they created the propulsive sequence that is nominated for best song.Everyone in the industry insists that negative campaigning has become less prevalent than it used to be. And yet when a veteran strategist with a client in the race told me how opportunistic it was for the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” cast to visit the site of the Monterey Park shooting on the eve of the nomination announcements, I’m pretty sure I got to experience it firsthand. “Do they not know the shooter is Asian?” the strategist asked. “It’s not a racially motivated crime.”For those paying attention to this year’s narratives, it was not a mystery where the backlash to Riseborough’s nomination was coming from; or the backlash to the backlash, articulated by Christina Ricci (represented by the same public-relations firm as Riseborough) in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Seems hilarious that the ‘surprise nomination’ (meaning tons of money wasn’t spent to position this actress) of a legitimately brilliant performance is being met with an investigation,” Ricci wrote. “So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition?” Suddenly, being backed by a studio had become a negative narrative of its own. Many awards consultants spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to face repercussions from their studio bosses. Others didn’t want to be seen as taking credit. “We prefer to be invisible,” a strategist working on several films this year told me. And yet here they were, seemingly sparring out in the open.Oscars campaigning has been around as long as there have been Oscars, but the modern playbook was invented by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Weinstein popularized the practice of sending out VHS screeners, demanded that actors clear their schedules for awards season and relentlessly lobbied academy members. Studios generally held their noses at aggressive campaigning, but Weinstein, unable to compete with their budgets, wasn’t above a shameless publicity stunt.For “My Left Foot,” one of his first Oscar campaigns, he got Daniel Day-Lewis to go to Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about the Americans With Disabilities Act. For “Il Postino,” a 1994 Italian-language film about a mailman who befriends the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, he persuaded more than a dozen celebrities, including Julia Roberts, Samuel L. Jackson and Madonna — none of whom appeared in the film — to record poetry readings for the film’s soundtrack. “The thing that’s horrible when you think about it is Harvey was really persistent,” said Cynthia Swartz, who helped run Miramax’s awards campaigns for more than 10 years. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer from a celebrity to do a poetry reading or wear a Marchesa dress. Knowing what we know now, it’s chilling and frankly scary to think how far that that behavior extended. He was always asking celebrities for things and being extremely aggressive about it.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Weinstein was widely rumored to wage whisper campaigns against his competitors. The last time Spielberg won a best-director Oscar was in 1999 for “Saving Private Ryan,” which lost an epic behind-the-scenes battle for best picture to Miramax’s “Shakespeare in Love.” “For Harvey, campaigning was a blood sport, and I don’t think it had ever been a blood sport before,” Terry Press, who was then Spielberg’s head of marketing at DreamWorks, told me. “Everybody wants to win. But Harvey wanted to win and kill everything else.” Many of the top consultants working today came out of the Miramax school, including Swartz, Angellotti and Lisa Taback, who went in-house at Netflix in 2018.‘Everybody hates Harvey, and he’s in jail, and he should be. He’s a criminal and he raped people. But people liked his results, and they still want them.’A number of regulations that the academy has issued since then to police campaigning have been in response to tactics pioneered by Weinstein. Today campaigners can reach out to academy voters only via approved mailing houses, and only once a week, and if a reception accompanies a screening it may only provide “nonexcessive food and beverage.” In Phase 2, no food or drink is allowed at all, including water. “I think the academy is full of it sometimes with this stuff,” a strategist with several films in the race told me. “You know, people have jobs. If you want them to see a movie at 7 p.m., and they’re coming from work, give them some popcorn and a water, my God! What are you trying to prove? I’m of the opinion that you could buy someone the most expensive lobster dinner and it is not going to change the way they vote. The only thing it might do is entice them to come see the movie — maybe.”The campaign industry that exists today has grown with and around the rules. With mailed screeners no longer permitted, films are typically uploaded to the academy’s online screening room at a cost of $20,000. Because campaigners can’t contact academy members directly, they try to reach them other ways, such as with $90,000 cover ads in the trades and paid email blasts through the guilds. Then there are the endless screenings, live score performances, dinners, trade round tables, precursor awards and special magazine issues — this publication also does one — all a part of a symbiotic ecosystem that is fed by the awards business.Once streaming platforms entered the arena and the best-picture category grew to 10 films, the campaign business expanded. Whereas a major studio might spend anywhere from $5 million to $25 million on an Oscars campaign, Netflix was estimated to deploy upward of $40 million on “Roma” in 2019, more than double the film’s production budget. The following year, Netflix spent a reported $70 million on its Oscar campaigns, which included “Marriage Story” and “The Irishman.” (A Netflix representative described those estimates as inaccurate.) Sometimes campaign spending has less to do with securing nominations than awards-hungry talent. “When there’s a race for the biggest names in the business, part of that is, ‘How are you going to support my film?’” an awards consultant told me. All of this is further reinforced by financial incentives. A nomination means that an actor’s or director’s fee goes up considerably. And the awards consultants who deliver those nominations get bonuses: upward of $25,000 for a best-picture nomination; another $50,000 for a win.“Winning awards has become the guiding principle of our industry, and it’s what’s destroying it,” Amanda Lundberg, the chief executive of 42West, which is working on the “Top Gun: Maverick” campaign, told me. (The publicity firm also consulted on “To Leslie” until December, when another firm took it over.) “It’s gotten to a place where every single filmmaker thinks their movie is an award contender.” Last year, Lundberg had a meeting with a filmmaker who wanted to discuss a best-picture campaign but hadn’t yet shown Lundberg the actual film. “It’s like we’re award fetchers,” she said. “Like you can just order that with me as if I’m 1-800-Oscar.”Lundberg worked for Miramax, starting in 1988 and again beginning in 2002. Despite all the new academy regulations, Lundberg believes the appetite for Weinstein’s tactics is as insatiable as ever. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “Everybody hates Harvey, and he’s in jail, and he should be. He’s a criminal and he raped people. But people liked his results, and they still want them.” Lundberg continued: “People are desperate to win awards. And we’ve guided it here because we’ve rewarded it with money and prestige. So what happens when people want something that’s limited? Do the math. It causes all sorts of behavior, and people lose where the line is.”Riseborough may not have secured her nomination if it weren’t for the complex math behind how nominations are tabulated. In Phase 2, Oscar winners are voted on by the entire academy. But in Phase 1, with the exception of best picture, they’re selected by their peers — i.e., actors nominate actors, directors nominate directors and so on. Members of the acting branch list their top five choices in order of preference, but not all of them vote. In other words, you don’t need the whole academy to like you; only actors, and only a small fraction of them.Much of the criticism leveled at the Riseborough campaign has been about how strategic it seemed despite being described as organic. McCormack encouraged her social circle to post about the film daily, a directive that the actress Frances Fisher — she played Kate Winslet’s mother in “Titanic” — seemingly took to heart. She posted about Riseborough almost every day during the week of nominations voting. “Hello actors branch of the academy!” Fisher wrote on Instagram, addressing the voters directly. In another post, Fisher broke down the math of just how few of their votes it would take to get Riseborough nominated, citing a story in Deadline Hollywood: “#AndreaRiseborough can secure an #Oscar nomination if 218 (out 1,302) actors in the Actors Branch nominate her in 1st position for #BestActress.” (The academy disputes the accuracy of those numbers; Fisher declined to comment.) And though campaign regulations forbid mentioning competitors by name, Fisher urged the acting branch to choose Riseborough, because it “seems to be that Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.”A best-actress campaign can run to $5 million. There is no question that the distributor of “To Leslie,” Momentum Pictures, did not spend that. The movie itself was made for less, and Riseborough and Michael Morris helped pay for the campaign themselves. Still, P.R. firms were hired. A social-media campaign was organized. And several people worked their phones to drum up support, including McCormack and McCormack’s and Riseborough’s manager, Jason Weinberg, whose roster of clients includes some of the movie stars who endorsed the actress. “Hand-to-hand combat,” as this style of campaigning is known, is not unheard of. Everybody does it, consultants told me, but they’re usually less overt about it. “You know, it wasn’t just, ‘We’re the little engine that could,’” a seasoned strategist with a few clients in the race told me. “It was more than that.”The thing with actors is they tend to like a certain kind of performance — big, physical and full of interesting “choices,” all of which Riseborough’s is. (Kate Winslet called it the greatest performance by a female actor she had ever seen.) The actors who campaigned for Riseborough probably believed they were simply championing an overlooked and worthy performer. Is it possible that some didn’t know they were violating regulations? Of course it’s possible. Have you seen what happens when actors come together for a cause? It can be clueless, but it is usually well intentioned. (See Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” video from the early days of the pandemic.) But in the process, they circumvented the vast Oscar machinery that has arisen since those early Miramax days.The academy’s regulations are a bit like the Talmud: maddeningly specific in certain places — mailings about a film may include only “an unembellished, creditless synopsis” — and vague in others. There’s even a clause that basically says, Mind the spirit of these rules, as they apply to things we haven’t even thought of yet. Every year campaign strategists call the academy, asking if certain things are OK, such as menus and party invitations. If anyone with a good Rolodex could bypass this system, then what is the point of the Oscar consultants hired to navigate it?But it also seemed to open a larger question of who the true underdog is in an Oscars race. Is it the actress without a studio or millions of dollars behind her, or the one with studio support and fewer connections? Gina Prince-Bythewood, the director of “The Woman King,” a blockbuster released by Sony, argued the latter in The Hollywood Reporter, addressing Riseborough’s nomination directly. “My issue with what happened is how people in the industry use their social capital,” she said, adding, “people say, ‘Well, Viola and Danielle had studios behind them.’ But we just very clearly saw that social capital is more valuable.” Perhaps, but surely starring in a $50 million critically acclaimed studio film is valuable too and is the entire reason that those working in obscurity make a play for an Oscar. At the end of the day, the campaign game is about finding the most compelling narrative, one that inspires people to root for you.The academy most likely upheld Riseborough’s nomination because she didn’t personally violate campaign rules. But few expected the ruling to go any other way. Penalizing those involved with the campaign would mean a move against Hollywood’s biggest names, whom the academy needs to star in their movies and show up to the awards. “This town doesn’t move without actors,” one veteran strategist told me. “If they came down on this campaign, well, that’s an indictment of Charlize Theron, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton. But the truth is, if I did it, I would be in academy jail.”It is worth remembering that the Academy Awards were created as a marketing device to entice people to see movies and, like football, used to air on Monday nights to boost ratings. “This is not the Nobel Peace Prize,” Lundberg told me. That doesn’t necessarily stop some Oscar winners from acting as if it is. At best, a nomination can extend the theatrical release of a film and drive more people to watch it long after it has left theaters. But it is just that: an ad created by a professional organization to sell you on movies even if — and especially as — their quality is in evident decline. “Every year, everyone talks about what a magnificent year this has been for movies,” Angellotti told me, “and the public is going, ‘Really?’”Many of the films nominated this year are a product of the Covid years. Spielberg wouldn’t have made “The Fabelmans” if he wasn’t stuck at home, contemplating mortality and wondering which stories he hadn’t told yet. (The answer turned out to be his own.) “Everything Everywhere All at Once” had to shut down production early and film Yeoh over Zoom, which is also how Blanchett learned to conduct for “Tár.” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” filmed on remote islands with a small cast, was an especially pandemic-friendly production. Movie theaters, meanwhile, have closed faster than audiences could keep track of, and 2022 box-office numbers fell short of the year’s meager predictions. (Theatrical attendance has shrunk by half in the last four years.) All of this is a reason to ask just how much Oscars drama, this year or any other, is manufactured by the very people whose job it is to get us to watch. The Riseborough controversy, though unpleasant for those involved, has ultimately led to many more people seeing “To Leslie.” (Momentum Pictures re-released the film in select theaters.)Looking ahead, some wondered if the only way to save the movie business from itself is to go back to the innocent pre-Miramax days of more restrained Oscar campaigns. If running a rule-abiding campaign can’t be done without millions of dollars, then the next logical step would be addressing those inequities. But instituting spending caps is a nonstarter, as it would mean big losses for the trades, screening rooms, caterers, consultants, stylists and any other entity that benefits from awards business. “Who’s going to call The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter and say we can’t take out ads anymore?” Angellotti said. “That’s called restriction of trade. I don’t see it as a viable situation.” Not to mention that many Oscar strategists are themselves voting members of the Marketing and Public Relations branch of the academy.This year, Terry Press is once again working with Spielberg, who has a well-documented aversion to Oscar campaigning. She admitted that spending limits were an intriguing if unrealistic idea. “I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face here,” she said, “but I would love to see somebody go all the way and spend nothing on any of this.“Because then,” she added, “it’s really going to be about the movie.”Irina Aleksander is a contributing writer for the magazine. Her last feature article was about Kirill Serebrennikov, a Russian filmmaker navigating widespread calls for a boycott of Russian culture. Javier Jaén is an illustrator and a designer based in Barcelona, Spain. He is known for his translation of complex ideas into simple images, often with a playful tone. More

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      Movie Tickets Veer Away From One-Price-Fits-All

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      Anyone buying a ticket for a concert, baseball game, Broadway play or flight has experienced it: Seats are now priced with dizzying complexity, with costs in some instances changing minute by minute, based on demand.But movie theaters? In many ways, they have been trapped in pricing amber. A seat has cost the same no matter where it is or when it is bought.No more.As they struggle in a fast-changing business, multiplex operators — some carrying astounding debt because of pandemic shutdowns — have started to experiment with pricing in ways that have startled moviegoers. AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, is testing “sightline” pricing, giving seats at evening screenings different costs depending on their location. (Discounts of $1 to $2 for the neck-craning front row, increases of $1 to $2 for the center middle, status quo for the rest.) Chains have also started to charge more on opening weekends for expected blockbusters like “The Batman” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” with plans to ramp up the practice.“It’s a taste of what’s coming,” said Stacy Spikes, who co-founded the subscription ticketing service MoviePass, which he plans to reintroduce nationwide this summer. “The big theater chains are gaining the technology to implement variable pricing on a wide scale. This may have near-term financial benefits, but it may also reduce attendance of younger customers who are more price sensitive and key to future growth.”Increasingly, theaters have been pushing customers toward premium-priced specialty tickets. On Saturday evening at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, for instance, patrons interested in the boxing drama “Creed III” could choose from three IMAX screenings (a $7 to $11 surcharge, depending on seat location), three screenings with Dolby audio and visual technology and reclining chairs ($8 to $12 more), and two standard screenings ($18 for a regular adult ticket).“I’m going to go, no matter what, because I love it, but sorting through all the options is starting to feel like a nuisance,” said Chris Ordal, a tech executive in Los Angeles. “I understand why chains are doing this, but they’re not doing a good job of communicating how it helps the consumer.”Theaters have increasingly been pushing premium-priced specialty tickets for movies like “Creed III.”Eli Ade/MGM, via Associated PressThe move toward pricing complexity adds risk as theater owners look for ways to get people back into the ticket-buying habit after three pandemic-battered years. IMAX has been experimenting with live events, including concert simulcasts. Fathom Events has premiered episodes of a religious TV show, “The Chosen,” in theaters; episodes have generated $20 million at the box office since November, despite being available free online.Prices may actually be going down for certain types of movies — ones that have struggled to attract ticket buyers in the streaming age, including comedies, conventional dramas and art films. Last month, theaters lowered opening-weekend prices for the octogenarian comedy “80 for Brady” to attract value-sensitive older customers. Tickets for evening screenings cost the same as a matinee, a discount of up to 30 percent, depending on the location. Some theaters offered the same deal for “A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks.“In a business where the only innovation in pricing has been to go up, this is a good first step,” said Chris Aronson, the president of domestic distribution at Paramount Pictures, which released “80 for Brady” and urged theaters to lower prices.Inside the Media IndustryRupert Murdoch: The conservative media mogul acknowledged in a deposition in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit that several Fox News hosts promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.Dropping ‘Dilbert’: Hundreds of newspapers across the country will stop running the comic strip after its creator, Scott Adams, said that Black people were “a hate group.”Carlos Watson: The founder of the troubled digital start-up Ozy Media was arrested on fraud charges, punctuating one of the more precipitous falls in the annals of online journalism.Vice Media: The departure of Nancy Dubuc, the chief executive of Vice, highlights the fallen fortunes of a group of digital media companies that not long ago was talked about as the future of the industry.“We’re hopeful that others will follow,” Mr. Aronson added, “and that this is hopefully the beginning of alternative ways of looking at pricing.” (Antitrust rules prevent studios from setting ticket prices themselves.)Theaters offered lower ticket prices for “80 for Brady,” hoping to attract value-conscious older customers.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesParamount spent about $28 million to make “80 for Brady,” which has so far collected about $40 million. Roughly 15 percent of the film’s target audience, women over 50, had not been to a theater in more than a year, according to exit surveys.Charging less for certain kinds of movies and more for others has long been a Hollywood third rail, with filmmakers panicking that it will send a message about quality. Just try telling Martin Scorsese that tickets for his next prestige drama will cost less than ones for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”The difference now is that the theatrical marketplace has become so difficult for certain genres that many filmmakers may have no choice. Do you want your film to be seen in theaters? Or are you fine with it going straight to streaming, where it could get lost in the digital maw? If the answer is theaters, you may have to accept a discounted price.The average movie ticket cost $11.75 in 2022, according to EntTelligence, a research firm. In New York, prices reach $28, depending on the format. A small popcorn at AMC Lincoln Square costs $10 with tax. (Fun fact: The average movie ticket price in 1969 was $1.42, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. Adjusted for inflation, that ticket would cost $11.93 today.)Because multiplex chains make most of their money from popcorn and soda, it is in their economic interest to keep ticket prices low; concession counters rely on foot traffic. But there isn’t much room to raise the price of popcorn anymore, prompting some operators to look at “creative” ticket pricing for growth.It has been a tough stretch for theaters. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesCinema attendance had been declining for decades, with people citing a variety of reasons for going less often: 50-inch TVs at home, streaming services, rude patrons who text on their phones when the lights go down. But the pandemic caused ticket sales to collapse in 2020 and 2021. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic. Cineworld, the world’s No. 2 chain, filed for bankruptcy in September, and dozens of its Regal multiplexes in the United States have closed.A recovery has been slower than expected. Cinemas in North America sold $7.5 billion in tickets in 2022, a 34 percent decrease from 2019, according to EntTelligence. This year, domestic ticket sales are running 24 percent behind the same period in 2019, according to Comscore.The gap is expected to narrow this summer, largely because the flow of new movies is normalizing. Movies delayed by pandemic bottlenecks are finally ready. Studios are also rerouting fewer movies to streaming services. Twelve movies costing at least $100 million to make will arrive in theaters from May to July, up from six during that period last year.“If you squint hard enough, it is possible now to see a return to the better days,” Robert Fishman, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who follows the Cinemark multiplex chain.Cinemark has comparatively little debt, but the hole for other theater companies is deep. AMC, which according to security filings has more than $5 billion in debt, said last week that it generated $990 million in the fourth quarter of last year, a 15 percent decline from 2021, and lost about $288 million.To shore itself up, AMC has offered $5 movie tickets on Tuesdays, introduced home popcorn products in partnership with Walmart, enhanced its Stubs loyalty program, announced plans to turn some theaters into Zoom conference rooms for corporate events and invested in a struggling Nevada gold mine. (Yes, really.) Last month, AMC announced its pricing experiment with seat location, which it calls Sightline.Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, characterized that move — charging a bit more for the best seats — as less a moneymaking gambit than a way to avoid broader price increases.“In these inflationary times, we are coming under pressure to raise prices,” Mr. Aron said in an interview. “We could have raised prices on every seat in the house. Instead, we are holding the line on 75 percent of the seats in the house.” (Also, subscribers to AMC’s premium loyalty program, Stubs A-List, can book a “preferred” seat at no extra charge.)Wall Street responded favorably. But cinephiles had a conniption. In a column, The Chicago Tribune’s film critic, Michael Phillips, called Sightline “a bush-league pickpocket move” and “the latest tiny nail getting tap-tap-tapped into the coffin currently under construction for an entire era of filmgoing.”AMC has pushed back, noting that some European cinemas have charged a premium for prime seats for years. Yes, prices are high in New York and Los Angeles, Mr. Aron acknowledged. But he said 30 percent of AMC customers paid less than $8 a ticket.“When you change the way an industry has priced itself for 100 years, it is not surprising that there is going to be lots of reaction,” Mr. Aron said. “It is our expectation that consumers will adjust to this very quickly.” More

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      How Much to See a Movie at AMC? It Will Soon Depend Where You Sit.

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      By the end of 2023, the movie theater chain will offer tickets at three different price tiers, with middle seats costing the most. You’ll pay less if you like the front row.Some middle seats at AMC movie theaters will be more expensive than others as part of the company’s new ticket-pricing strategy, announced this week.AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, said in a news release on Monday that this new pricing system, known as Sightline at AMC, would be in place at all of its United States theaters by the end of the year.The seats in the front row of the theater will be the least expensive and seats in the middle of the theater will be the most expensive, the company said. However, new prices will not affect showings before 4 p.m. or tickets sold at a special discount on Tuesdays, AMC said.AMC’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Eliot Hamlisch, said in the news release that the tiered system “more closely aligns” with the reserved seats and pricing models of other types of ticketed events, such as sporting events and concerts.Mr. Hamlisch said that the change would give people “more control over their experience.”Critics of the new system, including the actor Elijah Wood, have said it would give wealthy people an unfair advantage.“The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all, and this new initiative by @AMCTheatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income,” Mr. Wood wrote on Twitter.Under the new system, the most common seats available, the Standard Sightline tickets, would be priced as traditional movie tickets, AMC said.If you’re willing to crane your neck to see the screen, you’ll be able to pay less to sit in the “Value Sightline” seats in the front row. Some accessible seating for people with disabilities will also be priced in the value tier. To access the value tier prices, people must register with the AMC loyalty program, which includes one free membership tier.The seats in the middle of the theater will become “Preferred Sightline” tickets. The extra cost of these tickets will be waived for members of AMC’s top-tier loyalty program, A-List.A map outlining seating options will be available when buying tickets online, through the company’s app and at the box office, the company said in its announcement.AMC did not specify what the price differences would be for each ticket or whether prices would be consistent across cities and films.In New York City, the price differences were about to take effect at some locations later this week. At AMC’s 34th Street location in Manhattan, tickets were listed under the new pricing system for Friday’s showings of films, including “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” and a 25th anniversary screening of “Titanic.”For the 6:45 p.m. showing of “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” the front row seats, a space for a person in a wheelchair and a seat for the companion of someone in a wheelchair were described as “Value Sightline” seats and colored blue on the seating map.A key for the map explained that the value tickets were $2 off and that the preferred seats were $1 extra. Those were the five middle seats in each of the four back rows of the theater with gold-colored icons. Discounts for children and older moviegoers remain in effect.The “Standard Sightline” tickets for this showing included the two to three seats on either side of the preferred seats, the second-row seats and the six other seats made available for people in wheelchairs and their companions.Movie theaters have been experimenting with new tactics to boost ticket sales in response to two decades of weakening attendance, shutdowns during the first years of the coronavirus pandemic and the widening availability of digital streaming of first-run movies.In September, Cineworld, the London-based company that operates Regal Cinemas in the United States, filed for bankruptcy.Cineworld is the second-largest theater chain in the world behind AMC, and the company’s chief executive, Mooky Greidinger, said in the bankruptcy filing that “the pandemic was an incredibly difficult time for our business.”AMC said that by the end of the year, its new pricing system would be in place at all of the company’s theaters in the United States. AMC has about 950 theaters and 10,500 screens worldwide. More

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      Superman Is Driving DC Studios’ New Strategy

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      The yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that unfolds across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows, with Batman, Swamp Thing and others.Superman is returning to theaters — only now, along with saving the world, he has to prove that Warner Bros. has finally, without question, it means it this time, found a winning superhero strategy.DC Studios, a newly formed Warner division dedicated to superhero content, unveiled plans on Tuesday to reboot Superman onscreen for the first time in a generation, tentatively scheduling the yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” for release in theaters in July 2025. James Gunn, known for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is writing the screenplay and may also direct the movie, which will focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.“He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned,” said Peter Safran, chief executive of DC Studios, a title he shares with Mr. Gunn.Moreover, “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that will unfold (Marvel style) across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows and include new versions of Batman, Robin, Supergirl, Swamp Thing and Green Lantern. Those marquee DC Comics characters will be joined by lesser-known personalities from the DC library, including Creature Commandos and Booster Gold, a time traveler. One of the shows will explore Themyscira, the mythical island home of Wonder Woman.The 10 projects will roll out over four to five years — at which time a second batch of related films and shows will be announced, expanding the “Superman: Legacy” saga to nearly a decade and perhaps helping David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, to keep a promise to Wall Street about growth.“Part of our strategy is drive the hell out of DC,” Mr. Zaslav said at an RBC Capital Markets event in November. Discovery took over Warner Bros. last year as part of a $43 billion merger.If it all comes to fruition, the “Superman: Legacy” universe of projects will add to a roster of unrelated superhero movies left over from a previous Warner Bros. administration. These movies, sequels all, include “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “The Batman — Part II.”Warner Bros. bought DC Comics in 1969, and has since used DC characters to make more than 40 movies and at least 30 television shows, including cartoons. But the DC library has been widely viewed on Wall Street as underexploited because a competing comics-to-screens company, the Disney-owned Marvel, has provided an example of what is possible.Over the last 10 years, Marvel has been a blockbuster machine, delivering slates of interconnected superhero movies that have collected $23 billion at the global box office. Movies based on DC characters and released by Warner Bros. have generated about $9 billion over that period.Suffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together. In a restructuring in October, Mr. Zaslav ended the studio’s decentralized approach to superhero management — separate film and television divisions developed material independently, sometimes causing friction — and put Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran in charge of superhero films, series and animated offerings.“The stakes are massive for us, and for Warner Bros. Discovery,” Mr. Safran said.Mr. Gunn called Warner’s old system “pretty messed up.”“Nobody was minding the mint,” he added. “They were just giving away I.P. like they were party favors to any creator who smiled at them.”Superhero movies remain reliably popular at the box office, but a glut of them has prompted worries that studios are wearing out the audience.“I think it’s real,” Mr. Gunn said, referring to superhero fatigue. “You have to make the stories diverse and different. Good guy, bad guy, giant thing in the sky, good guys win — you can’t tell that story again. You need to tell stories that are more, you know, morally complex.” More

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      Sundance, Once a Hotbed for Film Deals, Tries to Find Its Footing

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      The kind of independent movies that the festival showcases have struggled at the box office, spurring worries about what the market would be like this year.The past two years have been a time of major upheaval in the film business — and at the Sundance Film Festival.Between the diminishing audiences in movie theaters, the consolidation of studios and the shrinking amount being spent on content after the streaming giants had their wrists slapped by Wall Street, few were certain about what kind of market there would be for new films at the current Sundance — typically a hotbed of acquisitions for the brightest lights in the independent film world.Even the festival’s opening-night gala last Thursday, its first in person since 2020, felt tempered by the reality facing movies.“These last few years have brought extraordinary challenges for our industry, along with opportunities to respond to the needs of artists and reach audiences in new ways,” Sundance’s chief executive, Joana Vicente, told those assembled. “And as many of this year’s films illustrate, this is a moment when so much is at risk — the health of our planet, human rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression and democracy itself.”Not exactly a celebratory introduction.So on Monday, a collective sigh of relief rose through Utah’s Wasatch mountain range, where, within two hours, two high-profile films that had premiered at the festival found eager buyers. Netflix plunked down $20 million to take the worldwide rights to the thriller “Fair Play,” while Searchlight Pictures spent just under $8 million for the musical-theater-geek mockumentary “Theater Camp,” starring Ben Platt.A day later, Apple TV+ nabbed the musical drama “Flora & Son” for $20 million, and the indie distributor A24 bought the Australian horror film “Talk to Me” for a wide theatrical release this summer.Despite the deals, the state of movies and how audiences will watch them remained an underlying worry.The Race to Rule Streaming TVA Changing Medium: A decade of streaming has transformed storytelling and viewing habits. But we may be starting to hit that transformation’s limits.Netflix: Reed Hastings, one of the founders of Netflix, said that he was ceding his co-chief executive title and becoming the company’s executive chairman.Crime Shows: Just a few years ago, it looked as though old-fashioned police and court procedurals might not make the leap to the streaming future. Now, they aren’t just surviving, they are thriving.AMC’s Troubles: The company has struggled to earn enough from streaming to make up for losses from its traditional cable business. It is a widespread issue in the industry.“Everybody is wringing their hands about the industry,” said Vinay Singh, the chief executive of Archer Gray, a production company whose film “The Persian Version” was shown in competition at Sundance. “A lot of people have lost their jobs. There are cost-cutting measures happening on spending content. People are worried.”Indeed, no one seems to know any longer what kind of movie is worthy of theatrical release and what should be sent straight to a streaming service. Distribution and marketing executives have to figure out not only how to sell a movie to an increasingly fickle audience but also how to navigate the needs of corporate parents, often giant conglomerates whose business priorities are constantly in flux.Plus, there is always the fear of succumbing to “Sundance Fever”— making lightheaded decisions because of the high-altitude fervor of the audience. Over the decades, both streaming services and theatrical distributors have overpaid for films at the festival. Harvey Weinstein spent $10 million for “Happy, Texas” in 1999 only to see it flop at the box office. Focus Features paid $10 million for “Hamlet 2” in 2008, and in 2019, Amazon scooped up three movies for a combined $41 million while New Line paid $15 million for “Blinded by the Light,” only to have it gross $12 million. And that was when the industry was healthier.Now, with so much riding on every decision, a positive response to a film at Sundance is no longer enough to guarantee that it will attract a theatrical distribution deal.Netflix paid $20 million for “Fair Play,” starring Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor.Sundance Institute“I’d like to believe this movie could have done well in theaters,” said Ram Bergman, a producer of “Fair Play,” one of the festival’s most acclaimed and sought-after films. But despite the enthusiasm from the traditional studios, he said, there was little faith that the $5 million R-rated thriller, starring Phoebe Dynevor (“Bridgerton”) and Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”), could succeed opposite the superhero spectacles without a prohibitively expensive marketing budget.“You are dealing with a lot of the studios that have convinced themselves that these movies cannot really do well in theaters,” Mr. Bergman said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if a streamer, let’s say Netflix, really wants to get behind it and treat it as one of, like, their high-priority movies, it’s hard to compete.”Therein lies the challenge. Most filmmakers come to Sundance with the expectation that their film will be shown on big screens across the country. The reality is that their movies are exactly the kinds that are performing poorly at the box office: small, inexpensive, complex and lacking movie stars.Add the fact that independent chains like ArcLight Cinemas and Landmark Theatres, which were the traditional supporters of indie fare, have closed and the calculus required to make these films successful becomes even more challenging.Searchlight is counting on fans of Mr. Platt (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and live theater in general to power “Theater Camp,” which celebrates all those who dream of hitting it big on Broadway. The thinking goes that if Mr. Platt can sell out Madison Square Garden, as he has with his one-man show, he can draw audiences to a movie theater. (However, Mr. Platt’s last film endeavor, the adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen,” grossed only $15 million at the domestic box office.)“This is a crowd-pleasing movie, and it was designed with an audience in mind from inception,” said Erik Feig, chief executive of PictureStart, one of the producers of “Theater Camp.” “Yet we didn’t mitigate our risk with presales. We took a flier. We did our research into the market, but comparisons change like every 90 seconds, so you kind of build something for a business model that two weeks later is extinct.”Other buzzy projects did not generate the kind of sales that Sundance, which ends on Sunday, is normally known for. “Cat Person” pleased crowds at the festival, but the critics excoriated it, particularly for veering away from the viral New Yorker short story it was based on. “Magazine Dreams” features an Oscar-caliber performance by Jonathan Majors (“Lovecraft Country”), but he plays a character who spirals into madness and begins carrying a loaded gun — a particularly difficult film to buy in the wake of the two recent mass shootings in California.And the documentary “Justice,” which turns an investigative eye toward Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court appointment and was added to the festival’s lineup at the last minute with much fanfare, disappointed critics, too.“Magazine Dreams,” starring Jonathan Majors, proved to be a difficult sell because of its dark subject matter.Sundance InstituteThe “Justice” filmmakers say they have received new tips, since their film was announced, that they plan to follow up on. It’s just not clear that the film, which was self-funded by the director, Doug Liman, who is best known for glossy action movies, will find a distributor ready to back an incomplete project.Despite the challenges, people were thrilled to be back in person at Sundance.“I feel a deep sense of gratitude to be in this room watching a movie,” Davis Guggenheim said at the premiere of his documentary “Still,” about Michael J. Fox and his protracted battle with Parkinson’s disease.“Theater Camp” brought its actors onstage to perform. The documentary “Going Varsity in Mariachi” was supplemented by a live performance by Mariachi Juvenil de Utah, and the cast of “Flora & Son” rapped one of its songs. The screenings were often sold out, and a film’s reception could be judged on the spot by the number of standing ovations it received. Still, buyers were being much more selective.“I think it’s natural that we’re seeing things not happen overnight,” Mr. Singh of Archer Gray said. “I think that’s fine. I actually think it might be a sign of health, because there’s so much stuff in play.”Mr. Feig echoed that sentiment.“It’s definitely a challenging market,” he said. “For each of these movies that has landed buyers, there probably weren’t 25 different offers for each one of these. There may be more of a handful. You just have to kind of build them sensibly knowing what your potential options are.”He also noted the festival’s combination of established names and rising talent, adding with more than a dash of optimism: “This is why Sundance is so amazing — it’s a discovery of fresh new voices. You saw that with ‘Fair Play.’ You see it with ‘Talk to Me.’ You saw that with ‘Theater Camp.’ All brand-new filmmakers, with their very first movie, and they broke through, they made noise, and they found studio partners.” More

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      Ticketmaster Called a ‘Monopoly’ at Senate Hearing Over Taylor Swift Debacle

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      The Judiciary Committee, responding to the bungled sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets, heard the company apologize and its critics trace the problem to the industry’s lack of competition.Live Nation Entertainment, the concert industry giant that owns Ticketmaster, came under withering attack during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday, with committee members from both parties criticizing it for the botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s latest tour and calling the company a monopoly that hinders competition and harms consumers.Over nearly three hours, senators pilloried a top Live Nation executive, Joe Berchtold, over the handling of Ms. Swift’s tickets last November and over longstanding allegations that the company badgers its competitors to win new business. Such bullying would be a violation of a Justice Department agreement that set conditions on the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2010.“This is all the definition of monopoly,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. “Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn’t even need to exert pressure. It doesn’t need to threaten. Because people just fall in line.”Some at the hearing went so far as to question whether the two companies, whose agreement with the Justice Department expires in 2025, should be broken up.Mr. Berchtold, Live Nation’s president and chief financial officer, acknowledged the problems with a presale for Ms. Swift’s tour, and apologized to the singer and her fans. When those tickets went on sale, millions of people were turned away. Technical problems also caused tickets to disappear from the online baskets of customers — whom Ticketmaster had approved through its Verified Fan system — as they were trying to buy them.At the hearing, both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concern about Live Nation’s dominance in the ticketing industry. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Berchtold largely attributed Ticketmaster’s failings to an assault from online bots: automated programs, run by scalpers, that seek to snatch up tickets before they ever make their way to consumers. That drew a largely skeptical response from the senators.“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said, with more than a hint of anger in her voice. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, was even more blunt. “The way your company handled the ticket sales with Ms. Swift,” he said, “was a debacle.”The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster united the world’s most powerful concert promoter and the biggest ticketing platform, creating a colossus without equal in the multibillion-dollar live music business.In 2019, the last full year unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic for which Live Nation has reported data, the company put on more than 40,000 events around the world and sold 485 million tickets. It owns or otherwise controls more than 300 venues around the world, far more than any other player in the business.In part because of its bulk and global reach, Live Nation has long been the target of complaints from competitors, who contend that the company’s size, and its control of Ticketmaster, give it an unfair advantage.Jerry Mickelson, a longtime independent concert promoter in Chicago, told the senators that a common frustration among the market’s smaller players is that Live Nation can profit from concerts put on by rival promoters because it still makes money through its control of Ticketmaster. “Pepsi doesn’t earn money from Coke,” he said. “But our competitor, Live Nation, makes money from selling tickets to our concerts.”Objections to Live Nation’s business have grown louder since 2019, when the Justice Department said that the company had “repeatedly violated” the terms of its regulatory agreement, called a consent decree.Justice Department investigators said that Live Nation had threatened venues that it would withhold tours under the company’s control if those venues did not sign deals with Ticketmaster, in violation of a key provision in the decree. Live Nation did not admit any wrongdoing, but in early 2020 the Justice Department extended the decree by five years.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was among those at the hearing who raised the question of whether Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster should be undone.“If the Department of Justice establishes violations of the consent decree,” he said, “then unwinding the merger ought to be on the table.”Mr. Berchtold pushed back against many of the accusations, saying that Live Nation does not threaten venues; that those venues hold a great deal of leverage in negotiating ticketing contracts; and that new entrants like SeatGeek, a rival ticketing platform, have kept Ticketmaster on its toes. According to various estimates cited by the senators, Ticketmaster controls the ticketing at 70 to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States. Mr. Berchtold said Live Nation’s estimate is 50 to 60 percent and he attributed its market share to the quality of its product.A small number of people demonstrated outside the Senate office building during the hearing, some holding signs referencing the Taylor Swift ticket debacle. Kenny Holston/The New York Times“We believe ticketing has never been more competitive,” he said.At the hearing, called “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” witnesses included other players in the concert business who described great difficulties competing against Live Nation.Jack Groetzinger, the chief executive of SeatGeek, said that venues are afraid of losing Live Nation concert tours if they do not sign with Ticketmaster. He said that is an obstacle for smaller companies like his in winning new business — though SeatGeek has been one of the more successful upstarts in ticketing in recent years, signing major clients like the Dallas Cowboys and Jujamcyn Theaters, one of the major Broadway theater owners.The panel also included a musician, Clyde Lawrence, of a small New York band called Lawrence. Dressed in a black suit, and with a scruffy head of hair, he joked that he could only dream of the crushing ticket demand enjoyed by Ms. Swift. But he described frustrations in dealing with Live Nation, such as the backstage costs it charges musicians, and the opacity of ticket surcharges, for which his band gets nothing.He described a typical show, where the face value of the ticket was $30, plus $12 in fees. Yet out of that $42 paid by the consumer, $30 was eaten up by the venue, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and another $6 went to the band’s touring expenses. “So that leaves us with $6 for an eight-piece band, pretax,” he said, “and we also have to pay our own health insurance.”In his questioning, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, honed in on a facet of Ticketmaster’s business, the resale marketplace that exists seamlessly within its online ticket sales platform, “where you’re forcing everyone in the resale market to come into your ecosystem.”“This is how monopolies work,” Mr. Hawley added. “You leverage market power in one market to get market power in another market — and it looks like you’re doing that in, frankly, multiple markets.”Ms. Klobuchar, who called the hearing, said in a summation that some of the problems in ticketing, such as fighting bot traffic, could be dealt with through legislation. But she said that the larger question, of whether to take action against Live Nation as a monopoly, was best handled by the Justice Department. The near-unanimous criticism from lawmakers on Tuesday may put pressure on the Justice Department to act.The most remarkable aspect of the hearing may have been the display of consensus by a panel often split along partisan lines. Mr. Blumenthal summed that up with a mocking salute to Mr. Berchtold.“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” he said. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.” More

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      in Theater

      As ‘A Strange Loop’ Ends, Its Creator Looks Back on a ‘Supernova’

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      Michael R. Jackson discussed his Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical, which closed Sunday after a nine-month Broadway run.The musical “A Strange Loop” won a Pulitzer Prize even before it got to Broadway, and then it won the Tony Award for best musical shortly after opening. But on Sunday, it closed after only a nine-month run.It has been a tough theater season all around — “A Strange Loop” was one of six shows that closed Sunday — as the industry continues to face audiences that are smaller than they were before the pandemic.But “A Strange Loop,” a meta-musical in which a gay, Black musical theater composer endeavors to write a show about a gay, Black musical theater composer, exited at a high point: During its final week, it pulled in $955,590 at the box office, which was the highest weekly gross of its run, and which set a new house record for the Lyceum Theater.The final night was a celebration: The playwright Michael R. Jackson, who began developing this show when he was 23 and who is now 41, got a standing ovation when he took his seat. There were more standing ovations for the show’s three Tony-nominated performers, Jaquel Spivey, L Morgan Lee and John-Andrew Morrison.Minutes after the show ended, Jackson sat for an interview about the run, the closing and his next project, in a hideaway up a spiral staircase above the stage. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Jackson and the director of “A Strange Loop,” Stephen Brackett, at the final performance.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThis show has been part of your life for 20 years. What was this night like for you?It was emotional, and it was a reminder of why I even began to write it. I wanted to fill an empty space that I saw, both in myself and in the world. And so to see that realized and to see everybody filling in that space in all these colorful ways that are even bolder and more beautiful than what I started with was so powerful and so affirming and so necessary.There’s so much anger and pain in the show. Was that anger and pain yours, and do you still feel it?I have access to it. It’s one of many of the colors in the crayon box. But it doesn’t motivate me. There was a time in my life where the anger was the thing that propelled me forward, but I think harnessing it and digging into it and questioning it and living with it and subverting it and making fun of it and then ultimately accepting it really helped me become the artist that was able to write it.The show won the Pulitzer and the Tony but is closing earlier than you would have wanted. Do you think of the show as successful or not?The more that I’ve reflected on it, it really makes sense to me that “A Strange Loop” would be a supernova that cuts across the firmament and then explodes. It’s not necessarily a piece of art that’s meant to fill a commercial need indefinitely, and I now can’t imagine how it would do that without compromising its artistic integrity. So I consider it to be a fantastic success because that’s how I define success. And I’ll always prioritize the artistic integrity over the commercial and the financial.Jackson embraces the actor Jason Veasey at the party after the final performance.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesMany people imagine that your parents are like Usher’s parents, who can’t accept his homosexuality and are skeptical of his career ambitions. I gather that’s not the case.Everything in the show is a fiction, even if it’s drawn from life. Whatever experiences I had with my parents, I took them in as I saw them, and I remixed them into a story. That’s not my parents, which I think is one reason my parents are able to watch the show and see its success and cheer for me so loudly.Do your parents accept you both as gay and as a musical theater writer?They do.I gather the show has led you to meet some famous people.As a child, I adored Whoopi Goldberg in “The Color Purple” and “Soapdish” and “Sarafina!” I thought, when I heard she was coming, that when I met her I would see that lady from “The View.” But the minute I saw her eyes, she was that wonderful performer from my childhood, and that brilliant artist, who loved my show, and it was such a beautiful moment to meet her and to talk with her about the show. And then there were people who didn’t see the show, but who I got to meet as a result of it. I got to spend time with my idol, Tori Amos, and that was a life-changing experience.One person who didn’t come is Tyler Perry, who is mentioned repeatedly in the show, often critically.The interesting thing there is that he and I have a phone relationship. He called me right after I won the Pulitzer, and we text every once in a while, and we spoke recently. He’s probably one of the most complex relationships in my life with someone who I’ve never met. He has a kind of phobia around “A Strange Loop,” without having ever seen it, whereas I’ve seen most of his work. We’ll see where that relationship goes. Maybe it’ll go nowhere. I told him we need to sit down and have dinner.In the last year and a half there have been a record number of shows by Black writers on Broadway. Many have struggled at the box office, but so have a lot of other shows. What’s happening?We need to look at the larger economic realities that are happening in the world more broadly, and the ways those trickle down. A lot of people get very confused in thinking that theater and Broadway live in their own separate economy, outside of everything else, and it doesn’t.Jackson onstage with cast members at the final performance of “A Strange Loop.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThroughout its run, the show faced a number of cast absences. What do you think was going on?Coming out of the pandemic, there’s been illness, there’s been all kinds of things going on, and people are taking care of themselves. And I think that’s going to be a new normal: People taking care of themselves, and shows will have to adapt to that.One of the adaptations was that the weekend before the closing, you went on as Usher for three concert-style performances. What was that like?It was really cathartic and terrifying and thrilling. I went from having to live the role to having to play the role, and bringing those two halves together gave me tremendous closure. Over the last couple of months, I’ve had some daily self-loathings that come in and say “Maybe the show’s not that good,” but once I stepped into it, I was again reminded of its power and of its audacity and of its singularity, and I sent daily self-loathing packing.This show has a white director and a white lead producer, which I understand has led to some pushback.There’s this hunger to infantilize me, or any Black artist, for making the choice to collaborate with who they want to collaborate with, and always wanting to use race or gender or some identity marker as an assumed obstacle, when it may not be at all. I wish that people would respect the choices that artists make and not want to undermine them by assuming that there’s some sort of racial discord that is always waiting to tear people apart or animate their artistic decisions. I’m a grown man, and I stand behind my artistic choices.Your next musical, “White Girl in Danger,” starts previews Off Broadway in March. What is it about?It’s a soap opera fever dream about representation in storytelling.I know it’s prompted in part by your own affection for soap operas. If you were a soap opera character, who would it be?Sammy Jo Carrington. She was on “Dynasty,” played with great aplomb by Heather Locklear. She’s a troublemaker, but she always gets what she wants.Jaquel Spivey and John-Michael Lyles take their bows at the final performance of “A Strange Loop.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesDo you see any thematic overlaps with “A Strange Loop”?In some ways I’ve been thinking of it as a companion piece. It’s not a sequel. It’s not direct. But there’s themes that I’ve been working through on “A Strange Loop” that I expound upon in a larger way in “White Girl in Danger,” if that makes any sense. You’ll have to see it.What’s next for “A Strange Loop”?I’m really hoping that people will pick it up and make their own interpretations of it. It’s a story that is like a jewel that has many facets, and you can hold it up to the light and you can see different things in it, depending on how you interpret it. So I really hope that regional theaters and colleges and universities and whoever else decide to take the risk on doing it, and really put their own stamp on it. More