If there’s one thing Hollywood is not willing to part with, even in the most challenging of circumstances, it’s awards season. As we wind down the oddest phase-two season I’ve ever seen to date—and I’m including COVID’s impact on the spring of 2021 in that group—I’m struck by just how much Emmy campaigning still got done, business as usual. I joined HBO for their FYC day earlier this month, moderating a few panels, and you still had a full crowd, a dynamic slate of nominees to discuss their work, and a palpable buzz in the air. I’d like to think the articles we’ve run here at Awards Insider told some good stories too; we’ve got some fascinating features in the section this week. As much as possible, things kept up—until the Emmy apparatus officially shuts down until 2024, for a majorly delayed ceremony.
I’m David Canfield, trying to make some sense of some competing realities. As writers and actors continue to strike for fair deals against the studios behind many of these very campaigns, their work still looms large in predictions, coverage, even interviews—nominated writers like Fleishman Is in Trouble’s Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Beef’s Lee Sung Jin have still campaigned by coordinating directly with media outlets, keeping Disney and Netflix, respectively, out of the equation and following their guild’s strike guidelines. Actors face stricter rules regarding press, and that blackout has been the most fully felt over these last few months. That hasn’t stopped the studios from pulling out double-truck ads with their biggest stars’ faces dominating the marketing. The FYC economy hasn’t exactly been deterred; I’ve sensed a sigh of relief from several strategists this past week, amounting to the feeling of, “Well, we got through it.”
Except, now looms Oscar season—and we’re in the rosy period, where every contender is feeling fresh and exciting and possible. And so the rules of the game get reset, with everyone doing what they can to—appropriately—get their names in the conversation. We’ve been debuting a flurry of first looks here at Awards Insider introducing many of those contenders, helmed by the likes of acclaimed writer-directors like Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers) and Garth Davis(Foe)—both of whom agreed to participate in these features so long as they didn’t discuss the writing part of their movies, to maintain solidarity with their guild while also putting their best foot forward to support work that they’re proud of. It’s a tricky balance, but so go the individual negotiations that will define this coming campaign cycle until the strikes draw to a close.
So how will these festivals look? Rebecca Ford and I are headed to Telluride next week, for a 50th-anniversary edition with—we think; of course, nothing is official—one of the more exciting lineups the festival has put together to date. It’s a lower-key affair, without a red carpet in sight, so it may be slightly more amenable to the current, complex conditions in Hollywood right now. Our colleague Richard Lawson will be in Venice, meanwhile, which will likely feel the pressures of this moment a bit more directly. But we’ll have to wait and see—for the movies, of course, and for what the landscape looks like in a month or so, with a rather strange festival season behind us—and perhaps, an even stranger Oscar season to look forward to.
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