Oscar season pickings get slimmer and slimmer each day, it seems. Right after rumors hit that the Weinstein Company may delay The Road until next year, Paramount has announced that they'll delay The Soloist, pushing the Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx vehicle out of this year's Oscar competition entirely.
Variety writes that the movie will open March 13 of next year, and will be an Oscar contender in 2009 if it's any good. And that's not even Paramount's only delay--Defiance will have a brief awards qualifying run in December before opening wide in January, a shift from its planned Dec. 12 release date. The movie, which stars Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, may benefit from the extra distance between Craig-as-Bond and Craig-as-Polish-Nazi-fighter, and if it's any good, it will have January all to itself. Plus, The Soloist makes one less Oscar hopeful to get in its way.
The news about The Soloist may turn out to be the worst for Robert Downey Jr., who is competing against his own great performances this year but had the best shot at a statue with this movie. Now Paramount will apparently push his role in Tropic Thunder for Supporting Actor consideration, a logical but risky move, given that another star of a summer blockbuster already has a slot locked up in that category. The Joker and Kirk Lazarus are both amazing performances, but the prestige-hungry Academy voters may not make room for them both.
It's crazy that the landscape of awards season can change so late in the year, but that's becoming the trend as more and more movies pick late release dates. All these changes will soon be reflected in our Oscar Prediction Chart, which is now completely up-to-date. Hey, the more these release date changes, the more of you read the chart that I spend forever working on, so it all works out for me!
