Fox looking for award success with War For The Planet Of The Apes.
Whilst War For The Planet Of The Apes has gathered significant critical acclaim, it is currently the least profitable film in the new rebooted franchise, but Fox is still banking on the property and are said to be pushing hard for it to receive award success with the Screen Actor’s Guild and more importantly the Academy Awards.
Deadline has revealed that Fox are planning a major awards push for the movie describing it as “like no campaign ever before in the half century.” It’s said that the studio’s plans include a best picture nomination and are willing to invest heavily to do so. The article also suggests that the studio’s best hopes of getting the movie into that category would be by gathering nominations in other categories such as cinematography, costume, music, sound, visual effects and make-up.
Fox is also said to be hopeful of Andy Serkis getting recognition with a nomination for best actor or some form of special award for his years of performance capture over the series.
The producer of the trilogy of new Apes movies, Peter Chernin told Deadline,
“I’m incredibly proud of this movie, and I do believe that on almost any level of storytelling, character development, narrative thrusts, or epic-ness, this is an extraordinary movie. In the past people probably have tended to sort of genre-ize it and sort of look at it, well, as if it is a genre movie and not take it as seriously as they should, and I think that you know our view is that this movie deserves serious consideration. Certainly it’s been made with a level of ambition, care, and attention that’s as meaningful as anything I’ve ever worked on.”
Chernin found himself in the Best Picture Oscar race last year with Fox’s Hidden Figures and went on to say,
“I think if we can get to that stage, I think we’ve got a good shot, because I think that on a filmmaking basis this is, in my opinion, you know, as impressive as anything that’s come out this year.”
He added that traditionally studios are able to get one or two of their bigger, “genre” movies into contention for the awards, but accepted that’s not always the case,
“If (voters) decide they are going to discount big movies, or studio movies, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it.”
Whilst the film could still possibly surpass its predecessors financially, there is no doubt that a major award haul would assist the film no end and it’s possible that the studio will bank on making a sizeable effort to make this a possibility.