2021 Oscars Could Be Delayed
By George Robbins
The Oscars are a series of awards voted on by an academy comprised of film aficionados that want to give credit to films and the hard work put into them. They are not just any set of awards as they are also a season during the year. From the end of a year up to the moment that the awards are given, there is a constant build up of hype. The hype that ends up building up as a result of the awards brings a spotlight down on the movies that are being voted on. So it is a bit of a surprise to find out that the entire Oscar season might end up being delayed from its usual February time slot.
The coronavirus pandemic has done all kinds of things to the world and affected all different kinds of people and industries. In particular, the movie industry is among the industries that got hit the hardest since theaters are completely shut down. With theaters shut down, many production studios have had to push back their movies releases to much later dates than before. Only a couple of studios have released their films straight to VOD in order to make money off their films in a time where it would be impossible to do so otherwise. For those who don’t already know, the Oscars have historically only given awards to films that have had some sort of theatrical run, even limited theatrical runs.
Despite the fact that only movies with theatrical runs qualified for awards, the Academy made the decision to allow digital films to be nominated in 2021. This means that even films that did not have theatrical releases could be entered for awards in the 2021 Oscar season. Given the state of the world, this only makes sense since not every film will be able to keep up with new release schedules. That added to the drastic increase in streaming site usage has made direct to digital films much more viable for awards since they have production value now rivaling that of films with theatrical releases. The final issue that arises with next year’s Oscars is the fact that there might not be enough films to be nominated for any awards.
Just looking at the release schedules that have been moved around due to the pandemic, we can see that many movies have been moved off of this year’s time table. This immediately makes the Oscars a much harder award ceremony and competition to hold properly. With this in mind, it is starting to seem more likely every day that the Academy will end up delaying the award ceremony. Unless more films manage to get released this year to add to the list of films that can be nominated, the likelihood of a delay for the awards is very good. Although we are 9 months out from next year’s awards, this is something we should try and keep our eyes on since this is something that hasn’t been seen before.