Awards

With the 2021 Oscars in the rearview, Variety looks ahead to what could be a very packed and condensed year with the Awards Circuit Draft for Oscars 2022. A tradition for the past 16 years, I’ve always thrown shots in the dark in the week immediately following the Academy Awards. For the first time, my

First off, let’s confirm yet again that Regina King makes everything better. She was a highlight of the Emmys, and she opened this year’s Oscars with style, class and a wonderful walk and talk — featuring a small trip that made her all the more fun. You’ve seen the criticisms about this year’s show, and I’m not

Daniel Kaluuya won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for “Judas and the Black Messiah.” For his stirring portrayal of Black Panther party chairman Fred Hampton in the Shaka King film, Kaluuya has been decorated heavily this awards season. This marks his first Oscar win and second nomination, the previous in 2018 in the

Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony was historic in more ways than one, making the 441-day wait for the 93rd Academy Awards well worth it. “The Father” star Anthony Hopkins nabbed actor, Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”) took home the actress prize, Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) won for supporting actor and “Minari’s” Yuh-Jung Youn claimed supporting actress (becoming the first

The 19th annual “Night Before” benefit, hosted by the Motion Picture and Television Fund, was held on Saturday evening, featuring a star-studded virtual affair made up of multiple Academy Award nominees, presenters and industry influencers. Those in attendance included multiple nominees from this year’s upcoming Oscars telecast, including Vanessa Kirby (best actress for “Pieces of

In this strange year of the global pandemic, the Independent Spirit Awards seemed to fall in line with what the upcoming Academy Awards are predicted to reward this Sunday, including showing love to frontrunners like “Nomadland” and “Promising Young Woman.” Hosted by “Saturday Night Live” cast member Melissa Villaseñor, the virtual ceremony, with some winners

This time last year the COVID19 pandemic was pausing productions and calling into question the ability of television series and talent to effectively campaign for Emmys, not only due to health and safety concerns, but also because of how it might look to be trying to celebrate amid so much death. Now, more than 365

The cost of awards campaigning has reached an all-time high, even in a pandemic year. We’re not just talking in terms of dollars and cents. The long slog was extended by months after the Oscars’ airdate was pushed from early February to late April, making the quest to land those big statuettes a brutal endurance

The final voting for the Academy Awards officially closed at 5 p.m. PT today. Speaking with multiple Academy voters, there’s something that needs to be stressed: this upcoming Oscars is a nail-biter and very close in multiple categories. With voting open for six days, it’s estimated and believed that anywhere from 20% to 30% of

CBS Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl LV led all nominees for the 42nd Annual Sports Emmy Awards, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday. The Super Bowl landed 11 nominations, followed by NFL Network’s “NFL 360,” which picked up nine. ESPN’s stable of networks led the conglomerate charge, with 54 nominations altogether

MRC, the parent of the Golden Globes, and broadcasting partner NBC have released statements in response to the email that was forwarded to all Hollywood Foreign Press Association members on Sunday in which former HFPA President Phil Berk shared a post that called Black Lives Matter a “racist hate movement.” Dick Clark Productions owner MRC

The Academy Awards have always — whether they like it or not — had a responsibility to provide snapshots of any given year when recognizing the best picture. The most prestigious artistic award in the film industry, the Oscars have been simultaneously praised and criticized for their choices. As they began diversifying their membership in

Oscars producer Steven Soderbergh maintained that masks would play “a very important role in the story” of the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, but kept the details under wraps. “If that’s cryptic, it’s meant to be,” Soderbergh said during a Saturday press conference. “That topic is very central to the narrative.” Joined with co-producers

The great sweeper, the film that runs away with the evening’s awards, has a strong history at the Oscars. Three films have won 11 Oscars in one night: “Ben-Hur” (1959), “Titanic” (1997) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003). Depending on where you stand on those movies, you could love

The “wolfvision” sequence in Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated animated feature “Wolfwalkers” is perhaps one of the most striking animated moments this year. Set in 1650 Ireland, the film follows Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey), a wolf hunter’s daughter brought to Ireland as part of the English colonization of the Emerald Isle during the time of Oliver

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” “Minari,” “One Night in Miami,” “Soul” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” were among the feature films honored by the Casting Society of America at the 2021 Artios Awards. The 36th annual Artios Awards, held by the Casting Society of America in its first-ever worldwide virtual ceremony, honored excellence in casting

As accomplished as Academy Award winner Viola Davis is in the industry, she still feels the unfair comparisons and judgments for the roles she chooses. “It’s so hard to get films made that don’t fit a certain box of how they see us,” Davis tells Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast. “Inclusivity cannot be a hashtag. You’ve

“Minari” is filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical tale of a Korean American family starting a new life in 1980s Arkansas. The characters — Jacob played by Steven Yeun, Monica played by Yeri Han and Soonja played by Yuh-Jung Youn — live in a small mobile home on an isolated patch of land, in the hope

The longest awards season in modern history is finally coming to a close with the opening of Oscar voting for the Academy’s roughly 10,000 members. The feeling among industry professionals and awards strategists is that many in the Academy at large decided to bow out of the first round of nomination voting. With a smaller

When celebrity events were halted because of the coronavirus pandemic last March, Hollywood’s clothing stylists, hairstylists and makeup artists were put out of work. The return of awards shows and virtual events has fostered a fashion resurgence. In March 2020, stylist Ilaria Urbinati — whose client roster of Hollywood men includes Rami Malek, Dwayne (“the

For “Love and Monsters,” the film’s VFX team, led by Matt Sloan, had to devise 13 different monsters, each with a unique look. “Each had its own design rules and personality. From gross little leech-like slug worms to the misunderstood monstrous crab in the finale,” Sloan says. Familiarity was the key to the art department’s

As diligently as actors and crew work on set, it’s commonplace to re-record some lines down the road. For the teams behind “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” the process of painstakingly matching audio and visual was further complicated by working remotely during COVID. Eliza Pollack

Effects supervisor Bill Watral enthuses about his team’s groundbreaking work on Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-nominated “Soul,” but is quick to clarify, “Every single department here had challenges of taking existing technology and applying it to new artistic uses. A lot of things that we did are different from what Pixar does usually.” In the film’s Astral Plane,

Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt is no stranger when it comes to being at the forefront of digital moviemaking technology. David Fincher’s “Mank,” a biographical drama about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is without exception. Visually, viewers are transported to Old Hollywood, where an alluring black-and-white visual palette blankets the screen, a look that

This year, there were 366 films in Oscar contention, with 50-plus nominated — including three centering on disabled people. While that isn’t much, it’s three more than most years and, sadly, it qualifies disability awareness as an innovation. The teams behind Amazon’s “Sound of Metal,” Netflix’s documentary “Crip Camp” and live-action short “Feeling Through” all

“Sound of Metal” director Darius Marder says he and his Oscar-nominated sound team — Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortes Navarrete — wanted heightened naturalism to depict varying stages of hearing and deafness of lead character Ruben (Riz Ahmed). “This sound mix is as complicated as in an action film,” Marder says. “This

Innovation can take many forms and sometimes it comes not from technology but technique. Nowhere was that more evident than during production and screenings of the Oscar-nominated short “Feeling Through.” Writer-director Doug Roland fictionalized his real-life encounter with a member of the deafblind community for the project. Newcomer and deafblind actor Robert Tarango played Artie.

Glenn Close is one of the most heralded actors in history, with a record eight Academy Award nominations — including this year, as best actress for “Hillbilly Elegy.” But to get there, even she has endured a series of bad auditions. In particular, she remembers a “miserable” experience in the late 1970s vying for a

When Glenn Close took on the role of Mamaw, the tough but tender grandmother to J.D. Vance in “Hillbilly Elegy,” one of her first calls was to an acclaimed makeup and prosthetics designer. “Team Mamaw started with Matthew Mungle, who had worked with me on ‘Albert Nobbs,’” says Close. “I did not want to see

Hollywood has always been drawn to true stories and there will never be a shortage of actors needed to re-create famous lives. But when portraying a real person who is dead or is even still alive, actors have their work cut out for them. On the one hand, they usually have lots of material to