I’m really just using this as an excuse to point to a Michael Cieply/NY Times piece that quotes our old and dear friend Dora — longtime readers will remember her as an old pal of this site. So I guess you’ll have to indulge me here — anyway, it does bring up a good topic – where are all the movies this year?
Companies like Summit Entertainment and Fox Searchlight have said they will be looking for movies at the festival. But anything less than a buying frenzy — and there has been no sign of that recently — would leave schedules short of movies as the awards season unfolds.
“I will give you an estimate of 30 percent,” Dora Kappou of Film-releases.com said of her company’s expectation for the decline, taking into consideration last-minute buying.
A schedule compiled by Exhibitor Relations, which does not include the tiniest releases tracked by Film-releases.com, shows about 17 percent fewer films planned through the end of the year than its schedule did at this point last year.
The only thing I take issue with is the statement that Benjamin Button never found its footing – it absolutely did. It was smack in the middle of the race. A pointless backlash and Slumdog took it down. Let’s start those fights again, shall we? On second thought, let’s not.