Early Oscars Cut Volume of January Film Releases

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved this year’s Oscar show up a month, it expected to reduce the fatigue of a too-long awards season and perhaps curb some of the unseemly campaigning that has often tainted the race.

But the shift to Feb. 29 put a damper on something else: The flow of films to theaters in January.

Hollywood expects to release or dramatically widen its distribution of only 23 pictures this month, according to box-office consulting firm Exhibitor Relations Co.

That’s down sharply from 37 films a year ago, when January kicked off an unusually robust movie season. Studios qualified films -- such as “Chicago” from Walt Disney Co.’s Miramax unit and “Antwone Fisher” from News Corp.’s Fox Searchlight -- for the 2003 Oscar race by releasing them on a few screens in December 2002, then introduced them to audiences nationwide in the new year.

That rollout strategy is much trickier in a shortened awards season, according to veteran Oscar strategists -- which is why audiences are suddenly finding fewer such offerings in theaters. “Big Fish,” from Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Entertainment, and “Calendar Girls,” from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, are among the few films making use of the gambit this year.

Rather than simply shifting the January bulge back to earlier months, moreover, Hollywood’s big studios appear to have released fewer pictures overall during the current Oscar cycle. According to Exhibitor Relations, major distributors released only 38 films in the third quarter of last year, down nearly 20% from 47 a year earlier.

“I’m surprised,” Jack Foley, distribution chief of Vivendi Universal’s Focus Features specialty film unit, said of the steep drop.

But Foley said the thinner schedule helped his company lengthen the theatrical run of “21 Grams,” which was released in November. “It’s much better for us than it would have been last year in that unbearable morass” of films, Foley said.

Several observers speculated that the clipped season had pushed Miramax, past master of the January rollout, to hurry its “Cold Mountain” onto more than 2,000 screens in December.

Miramax Chief Operating Officer Rick Sands said the wide release was dictated by the picture’s nature, not the clipped season. “ ‘Cold Mountain’ is a big, epic film with a sweeping love story and major stars. We chose to go wide because it was the commercially sound thing to do,” he said.

Oscar night was moved as part of a two-year experiment aimed at increasing excitement around the awards show.

“By the end of March, there was a feeling that a kind of awards show malaise had set in,” said academy spokesperson Leslie Unger. “Even movies released in December were three months removed from people’s minds.”

The film academy’s board of governors has said it expects to assess the effect of the shiftbefore making the change permanent.

So far, the declining picture count appears to be only the most dramatic of several dislocations that have stemmed from the move.

To keep up with the changing awards calendar, for instance, studios shifted Oscar-oriented advertising dollars into November and December, and such spending will clearly fall off as the shorter season ends a month early.

“It’s probably too early to tell. But I’d say it’s going to be about a wash,” Variety publisher Charles Koones said of the net effect on Oscar-related advertising in his Hollywood trade publications.

Oscar watchers also contend that the shorter season enhanced the stature of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn.’s “Critics’ Choice” awards, which were televised on E! Entertainment Television on Saturday.

Those awards were heavily attended by stars and big-name directors, at least partly because they held an influential slot before the close of Academy nominations balloting. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.’s Golden Globes suffer the disadvantage of having their awards show broadcast after Oscar nomination balloting concludes.

“We do think this helps our cause,” said Joey Berlin, president of the broadcast critics group, though he said his show’s star presence had grown substantially even before the Academy’s move.

Among Hollywood insiders, a frequent complaint about the shortened season has centered on the difficulty of seeing dozens of pictures before casting votes -- a problem that was compounded by a short-lived industry ban on the circulation of DVD “screeners” of films, because of piracy concerns.

“Though certainly not the intention, the date change has created a more frantic atmosphere for both members who need to view the films and studios who want them to be seen,” said Tony Angellotti, a professional Oscar campaigner who has been working this year on “Seabiscuit” for Universal Pictures, DreamWorks and Spyglass Entertainment, as well as “Finding Nemo” for Disney.

Even with a smaller number of pictures in a somewhat more frenzied race, the overall box-office take may not suffer, thanks in part to the continued strength of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” That blockbuster was released by Time Warner Inc.’s New Line Cinema in mid-December, and has over $300 million in U.S. ticket sales to date.

“It’s kind of a tough call,” said Exhibitor Relations President Paul Dergarabedian. “But I think we’ll be up, even though last year it looked like we had a stronger lineup.”