Nominations Blur Lines Between Big and Small Screens
STREAMING SERIES BENEFIT FROM TALENT CROSSOVER
THE GOLDEN GLOBES ADDED TV awards to its show in 1962. Now, audiences have a hard time differentiating between what’s a feature film and what’s a TV series, and the Golden Globes nominations reflect that blurring especially well this year.
Take, for example, the TV drama actress nominations: This year, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon of “The Morning Show” go up against “The Crown’s” Olivia Colman and Nicole Kidman of “Big Little Lies.”
Ten years ago, this would be the dream cast of a big-screen film. But in 2019, Oscar winners Kidman, Colman and Witherspoon are comfortable and confident enough to tackle great material, no matter the platform.
An industry insider notes that a turning point came in the middle part of the previous decade when Glenn Close agreed to star in “Damages.” The actor had dipped her toe into prestige TV movies before 2007, when “Damages” debuted, but she was primarily known as an award-winning movie star. That series, plus the bounty of polished, envelope-pushing series emanating from HBO — including “Sex and the City,” starring platform-agnostic Sarah Jessica Parker, “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” — opened up screen doors for talent to tell their stories over eight episodes, rather than two hours.
And streamers are finding great stories to tell from the indie world. After two of producer Anthony Bregman’s films (“The Land of Steady Habits” and “Private Life”) that were stuck in specialty divisions over casting and budget issues got fully financed by Netflix, he signed a first-look deal with the streamer, which is now producing three of his seven features. Deciding which distributor to go with “is a tricky thing — it’s a feel, and it’s also who’s biting,” but he finds the outlet very producer-friendly.
“Netflix is so active and hungry for material that it feels like there’s less clubbiness about it than in some of the other financing/distribution setups in the business.”
Indeed, he’s one of the executive producers on Paul Rudd starrer “Living With Yourself.”
Rudd — who stars as Ant-man in the Disney/marvel blockbuster feature franchise — nabbed a Globes nom for TV musical or comedy actor.
“It’s really gratifying when you work on something, and you know we all believe in it, so when it finally comes out and people see it, and the response was positive — it’s always nice when that happens,” he told Variety.
Last year, Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” which producer Netflix used to conquer the Venice Film Festival, laid the template of what the streamer was going to do with an awards juggernaut. Now, Netflix dominates the Globes nominations, with 34 in total across television and film.
“Monday’s nominations are a sign of a new world order in Hollywood, one that is increasingly dominated by streaming services. Along with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime had big mornings, scoring nominations for the likes of ‘Catch-22’ and ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,’ while Apple’s newly launched subscription platform picked up three nods for ‘The Morning Show,’” wrote Variety’s Brent Lang. He noted that competition for digital is only intensifying. Disney Plus launched in November and Comcast and Warnermedia are preparing their own Netflix challengers, Peacock and HBO Max.
Netflix’s awards season bounty includes a whopping six nominations for Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story”; five for Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman”; four for Fernando Meirelles’“the Two Popes”; and two for Craig Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name.”
“I think that Netflix and Amazon are actually complementary to what we’re doing,” says John Friedberg, STX’S president of international sales.
STX mined box-office success with “Hustlers,” and Jennifer Lopez earned a supporting actress nomination to boot.
So streamers are using the new Hollywood business model, which assumes a TV and film crossover with talent, from stars to directors to writers. But another quirk to this year’s Golden Globes noms is the way people are talking about content and are consuming it.
Social media was made for streamers. When Netflix dropped “Marriage Story” on Dec. 6, Twitter exploded. #Marriagestory trended, with viewers sharing their feelings about the film, posting clips of favorite scenes and generally creating a PR windfall for free. It also created a FOMO urgency, and while Netflix doesn’t typically release numbers about views, one can only speculate about how many millions watched a New York indie filmmaker’s take on a divorcing couple, a movie that even five years ago would be relegated to 200 screens in the top 10 markets.
Now, audiences around the world get to watch awards season gems that once only played on the coasts. It’s the democratization of cinematic art.
Streamers have also impacted how content is consumed; for some,“the Irishman’s” three-hour-plus running time means they break it down into limited series bite-size portions. For others, it’s just another binge, similar to blocking out all day for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (which nabbed two Globes nominations on the TV side).
Streamers themselves seem to cater to talent that wants to tell a story, whether that’s over 10 episodes or 2½ hours. Veteran producer Cassian Elwes, who sold Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” for $12.5 million to Netflix, told Variety in February: The majors “have basically ceded the adult-oriented marketplace,” so director Rees’ next pic,“the Last Thing He Wanted,” was a perfect Netflix fit.
“Streamers are releasing incredible movies that the studios don’t want to make, but that the talent do. And they’re reaping the rewards creatively.”
Indeed, as Variety senior film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote: “Tellingly, I don’t see a single other choice among this year’s movie nominees who is there for that sort of swoony indulgent HFPA Classic here’sa-diva-we-just-adore reason. Sure, there are old favorites, but they’re all actors and actresses who have been avidly buzzed about this year — from Eddie Murphy, bringing it in ‘Dolemite Is My Name’ like he hasn’t brought it since the ’80s, to Saoirse Ronan, who at 25 already has three Golden Globe nominations and has just nabbed her fourth for her performance as the eye of the sisterly storm in ‘Little Women.’”
And all that talent contributes to what will most likely be one of the most star-studded Golden Globes red carpets ever. Delivering social-media moments will be fashion-forward actors such as Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie (“Bombshell”), Lopez (“Hustlers”), the “Big Little Lies” cast, Awkwafina (“The Farewell”), Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”), Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”), Renée Zellweger (“Judy”), Christina Applegate (“Dead to Me”), Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”),
Kirsten Dunst (“On Becoming a God in Central Florida”), Natasha Lyonne (“Russian Doll”) and Phoebe Waller-bridge (“Fleabag”) are sure to wear bold statement pieces. And their male counterparts, including Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”), Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”), Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”) and especially Billy Porter (“Pose”) will grab attention, too.
The Globes promises glamour and talent, no matter where it’s screened.