Filmmakers and studio executives, be warned: a long-suspected Oscars curse may in fact be real.
Over the past 13 years, the vast majority of best director winners have followed up their wins with disastrous films that tanked at the box office or alienated viewers. These films ultimately brought the highs of a career-defining moment crashing down to the reality of the fickle and unpredictable tastes of modern audiences.
Take a look and a pattern becomes clear: Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012) follow-up Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) was a box office disaster. Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) follow-up First Man (2018) failed to connect. Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley (2021) didn’t come close to making back its budget after The Shape of Water (2018) dazzled the Academy. Chloé Zhao followed up the gorgeous Nomadland (2020) with the would-be superhero franchise starter, Eternals (2021). That one landed with a thud.
The heretofore suspected best director curse — seen as early as 1980 with the epic Western and studio bankrupting Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s post-The Deer Hunter dud — lurched into full view in recent weeks with Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho’s big-budget, big-swing sci-fi bomb.
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And hey, maybe the curse isn’t real and something else is happening here. Doherty suggested to THR that the best director Oscar may create a halo effect around the filmmaker, which can play a part in dooming his or her follow-up project.
“I wonder if the people working with the director — producers and writers and actors — are over-awed and therefore less willing to question his/her judgment because his/her auteurist brilliance has been validated by the industry’s highest award,” he said. “Back in the studio days, a mogul could tell the director on the payroll the film was too long and he needed to cut 25 minutes. And that was that. Who today would have the stones to say that to Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan?”
For people unaware. European countries have multiple film festivals as well as awards associated with them. Your country probably has a few.
They are a much better indicator of a movie’s quality than Oscars has been for a long time.
Emperor@feddit.uk 2 days ago
There’s a lot of reasons there:
The ones who go against this trend have won for bigger budget films and then dial it back and make smaller, more personal films which can get done on a lower budget but will get extra eyeballs because of the Oscar win and so can turn a profit.
That said, the “curse” may be no bad thing. I suspect Bong knew Mickey 17 wouldn’t cover the costs but felt like this was his chance to get an expensive film made on the studio’s dime. He may even have enjoyed the idea of an anticapitalist film getting a great reception but costing a big American studio money. He’ll not have any problem getting future projects funded because of this, they may just have a more modest budget.
tiramichu@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Totally. I feel like winning Best Director is your one-time free pass to get a risky project greenlit that normally you could never.
And if those movies don’t smash the box office then maybe, in part, it’s because the director quietly never intended them to be the kind of movie that would.
xyzzy@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I don’t think it really matters much. For example, Chloé Zhao doesn’t seem to be having trouble getting big names to line up to fund or star in her next project (a dramatized tragic moment in the life of William Shakespeare). I suspect most blame the failure of The Eternals on other factors (like the terrible script), not her. I further suspect that the house it probably paid for is more than enough to make up for any twinge of disappointment she has that it didn’t please the fans.