Not enough praise can be given to Andy Serkis for his work in the Planet of the Apes movies. It's one thing for an actor to realistically become another human being, but Serkis' performances in both Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes are truly one step beyond, as the audience really never imagines for a moment that they're not looking at a chimpanzee. It's work that deserves the highest of awards - and the folks at 20th Century Fox are working to try and one for the star.
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Fox is indeed planning on promoting Andy Serkis' Dawn of the Planet of the Apes performance during this year's awards season. This news, however, comes with two catches. The first is that Fox is not campaigning for him as an individual, but is instead as part of the entire cast (with emphasis on including Toby Kebbell, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Gary Oldman). The second catch is that despite the fact that Serkis' character, Caesar, was clearly the lead in the film, the studio plans on pushing for the Best Supporting Actor awards instead of Best Actor.
While it would have been nice for Fox to give extra special attention to Andy Serkis' work this awards season, there is a good amount of sense in the move. For starters, Serkis' turn wasn't the only absolutely fantastic performance in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and all of the actors mentioned above did spectacular jobs as well. The other part of the reasoning is history. As THR notes, Fox had a similar campaign for movies like Crash, Syriana, and Babel, and all of those movies ended up getting acting nominations the year they were released.
As for the Supporting Actor push, that's likely just a move to increase odds of nomination. The Best Actor field is highly competitive this year, with Benedict Cumberbatch's turn in The Imitation Game and Eddie Redmayne's Theory of Everything performance both getting a lot of attention already, and Serkis has a much better chance of both being nominated and winning if he is battling it out with character actors. If he does winning the prize, we'll all know in our hearts the award he really deserved.
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