Dear Gossips,
The Golden Globe nominations are coming later today – we’ll post about that later. The Oscar race continued to take shape yesterday with the announcement of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association winners of the year, further boosting the Oscar nomination chances of Anora, Mikey Madison, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Anora seems like a lock at this point to be among the Best Picture candidates at the Oscars and as for Marianne, seeing as both the LA film critics and the NYC film critics named her as their best for acting for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, her odds just got significantly better in a category that is looking as competitive and unpredictable as it's ever been. Between her, Mikey, Karla Sofia Gascon, Cynthia Erivo, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson, and Tilda Swinton, all of whom have been campaigning in some form or the other, who’s going to be left off the ballot?
Over at the box office, Moana 2 and Wicked are continuing to do strong business so where the Oscars are concerned, Wicked is looking better and better for a Best Picture nomination. There are some people, in fact, who think it might be turning into a Wicked vs The Brutalist showdown which would be the award season Barbenheimer of 2024/25. The Brutalist director Brady Corbet is already presumed to be in for a nomination for Best Director. But personally, I’m really, really, REALLY hoping we’ll see Jon M Chu’s name among the five nominees.
I already don’t think Jon’s getting enough credit for what he’s done with the movie. And I get it, the promotional tour chaos that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were serving consumed all of our attention but let’s not underappreciate Jon’s vision for this film, what he’s been able to achieve under so much pressure and expectation, and make a movie that both honours the stage production and becomes its own thing independently…to say nothing of that box office!
I might be premature on this, but Justice for Jon M Chu!
Here's Jon at the Astra Awards last night where he won Best Director and Best Picture for Wicked.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey