ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  FEBRUARY 04, 2020 The Unsurprising Oscars In 2019, Olivia Colman beat out Glenn Close for best actress. In 2018, Jordan Peele triumphed over Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to win best original screenplay. In 2017, of course, all hell broke loose after the Great Faye Dunaway–Warren Beatty envelope mix-up. But the 2020 Oscars, by contrast, seem fairly certain to be surprise-free—even if, paradoxically, it’s still difficult to determine which film will wind up winning best picture. Mark Harris thinks the trouble might come down to the ceremony’s timing: “This year the Oscars are on February 9—that’s by far the earliest that they’ve ever been,” he writes. Yet “the problem that the Academy Awards can’t overcome is not that they’re late, but that they’re last. No matter how early you make the ceremony, every single other awards show that parasitically (no pun intended) benefits from being part of Oscar season will be moved to take place even earlier, and the result will be exactly what it feels like this year—the Academy Awards will become the last stop on the local.” Elsewhere in HWD, Donald Liebenson chats with Sam Wasson about his new book, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood; Anthony Breznican debuts the mesmerizing VFX reel for The Rise of Skywalker; Britt Hennemuth gets up close and personal with Captain Marvel breakout Lashana Lynch,who plays a key role in the next James Bond film; and photographer Landon Nordeman follows awards season’s key players from the Palm Springs International Film Festival to the Golden Globes, capturing everyone from Brad Pitt to Roman Griffin Davis along the way.

Slouching Toward the Oscars The acting awards seem carved in stone (Phoenix, Zellweger, Dern, and Pitt have been stockpiling trophies for weeks), so where will the shocking upsets come from? READ MORE » Forget It, Jake Sam Wasson on his new book about Chinatown, and an era when adults “were well-informed by informed critics and then went to the movies because the movies were still good.” READ MORE » The Force Is With Them Industrial Light & Magic reveals the layers beneath its Oscar-nominated Rise of Skywalker visual effects, from the creation of Leia to the merging of puppets, miniature models, stunt performers, and digital imagery. READ MORE » Lynch, Lashana Lynch Next up for the Captain Marvel breakout: taking on the Bond franchise as a new agent while Daniel Craig takes his last Aston Martin ride. READ MORE » Starry Starry Night In the first days of 2020, Oscar-nominated stars like Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, and Laura Dern hustled across the awards circuit—and Vanity Fair was there to capture every moment. READ MORE »