The band of brothers (and sisters) behind Dunkirk are underdogs facing overwhelming odds as they plot a strategic campaign.
That campaign, of course, is for the Oscars.
Director Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic, which was released in July, faces a daunting battle to gain traction with Academy voters considering all the great films that have opened since.
So Warner Bros. brought Dunkirk to the Toronto Film Festival — a rare stop for a film that received a mainstream release months earlier despite the pretense of Imax’s 50th anniversary as the peg. “Haven’t you all seen this already?,” TIFF director Piers Handling joked before the screening, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Nolan, who usually avoids such Hollywood glad-handing, also made the pilgrimage the Governors Awards for a little awards season face time. Because the visually stunning epic doesn’t play as well on a screener, the studio plans to re-release Dunkirk in IMAX and 70mm theaters to give voters a chance to see it in its full glory.
Universal has a similar problem with Get Out, the political allegory horror film that proved one of the biggest surprise hits of the year. Only, it proved that hit in February, opening on the same weekend as the last Oscars.
Despite the almost unanimous critical acclaim, that puts the film in a hole: Seven of last year’s nine best picture nominees were released in November and December.
Director Jordan Peele, producer Jason Blum and lead actor Daniel Kaluuya have been hitting the schmoozing trail this fall in hopes of reminding voters what all the fuss was nine months ago.
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