‘Anora' Isn't the Only Oscar Contender on an Upswing
'Anora' had already won top prize at the PGA Awards and DGA Awards the previous weekend, with its Critics Choice Award for Best Film being a nice bonus. The only other film to win over those guilds and the WGA yet not win Best Picture is 'Brokeback Mountain' in 2006. The major harbinger indicating that the Ang Lee movie would not prevail at the Oscars was 'Crash' winning Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards, so a win at that particular awards body in the coming week is crucial to the Neon release's dominant awards campaign.
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All that said, there is another Best Picture nominee that has been on a significant upswing stemming from these guild awards, which are happening concurrently with final Oscar voting. That film is 'Nickel Boys.' The Orion Pictures release directed by RaMell Ross won both Best Adapted Screenplay at the WGA Awards and the Michael Apted Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film at the DGA Awards.
Although Ross is not nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, he is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay alongside Joslyn Barnes, who is also one of the producers nominated for Best Picture on behalf of the film. The other two are Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner of Plan B Entertainment.
However, it's more notable in this category that fellow Oscar nominees 'Sing Sing,' 'Emilia Pérez,' and 'Conclave' were ineligible at the WGAs. That's because 'Conclave,' the papal election drama written by Peter Straughan, adapting the Robert Harris novel of the same name, has been the category frontrunner thus far. Straughn won both the Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe, but has yet to win an award voted on by people in the Academy. But that should change soon, as Straughan is expected to win at the BAFTAs on Sunday.
What could ultimately determine which film wins the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar isn't the BAFTAs but the USC Scripter Awards, a prize that's leaning toward 'Nickel Boys.' That awards body is on a hot streak, having predicted the last two Oscar winners, including 'American Fiction' and 'Women Talking.' Coincidentally, both of those films also happened to be Orion Pictures releases.
'Conclave' though is not to be counted out, even though the WGA Awards have predicted the last four Best Adapted Screenplay winners in a row, as it is an incredibly popular film. But the other statistic that should cause the film some concern is that it has been seven years since the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay was not awarded to the film's director. If his reception at the DGA Awards, where all five Best Director nominees stood up to cheer him on, was any indication, Ross and his film 'Nickel Boys' have the most momentum as Oscar voting begins to wrap.
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You Can Probably Thank a Dedicated ‘Freaky Friday' Fandom for Getting Its Sequel Released in Theaters
When you hear the words 'iconic movie,' the usual suspects tend come to mind: 'Citizen Kane,' 'Raging Bull,' 'The Godfather: Part II.' And now, 'Freakier Friday.' This is not an exaggeration: Kate Erbland's IndieWire review even gave a nod to the enduring fandom of the beloved original 2003 film 'Freaky Friday,' with Erbland writing, 'If you're of the mind that Jamie Lee Curtis should have won her first Oscar for her work in Mark Waters' film. … 'Freakier Friday' is very much for you. Simply put: Here is a legacyquel worth the wait. What a concept!' More from IndieWire You Hate AI. They Teach It Anyway. Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' Reinvents Kurosawa in the Canyons and Subways of New York And what a concept indeed. How does anyone revisit an iconic classic film — and even arguably make it even better? In-demand screenwriter Jordan Weiss knew exactly how, and even helped land a theatrical release for the sequel that was long rumored to be for streaming only. (A representative for Disney did not confirm or deny original release plans for the film.) 'I'm so glad that it's going to be released in theaters,' Weiss told IndieWire during a recent interview. 'I feel like these big, fun event films that are especially more traditionally girly or geared towards women [should be in theaters].' Whereas Universal arguably dropped the ball by foregoing a U.S. theatrical premiere for 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy' and releasing it solely on Peacock, Disney listened to the overwhelming social media excitement for a beloved franchise when 'Freakier Friday' was finally confirmed. Elyse Hollander, the screenwriter who was first announced as attached to the project in 2023 (Hollander has a co-story-by credit on the sequel, with Weiss as the sole writer), told IndieWire that the film was originally not going to be in theaters. 'I was definitely told in the early days that this is for streaming,' Hollander said. 'I think when it was announced, they [Disney executives] were pleasantly surprised by the excitement around it, and it kind of moved it up a tier of like, 'OK, this can actually become an event and something really special.'' Of course, the return of original stars Curtis — who championed the sequel for years — and Lindsay Lohan, along with fellow returning faces Chad Michael Murray and Mark Harmon, only added to the fan excitement…and, in turn, the pressure that the 'Freakier Friday' team felt when working on the feature. 'It's a big risk for everybody involved to come back. You don't want to ruin the legacy, you want add to it,' Hollander said. 'I was like, 'I cannot be responsible for ruining a beloved film and adding to a cash grab, schlock pile that would be once direct to DVD.'' Weiss, who boarded the legacy sequel in 2024 when her 'Dollface' collaborator Nisha Ganatra joined as director, credited the shared love for the 2003 'Freaky Friday' among both creatives and executives alike. 'I remember seeing 'Freaky Friday' in theaters with my mom when I was 10 years old,' Weiss said. 'I feel like I was the center of the target audience. I was a huge Lindsay Lohan fan. It was absolutely one of my favorite movies. So when when Disney called with the opportunity to come in and work on it, it was an easy, excited yes.' According to Weiss, there were certain 'non-negotiables' for 'Freakier Friday' that Disney spearheaded, such as the inclusion of rock band Pink Slip and the core cast back in lead roles. Kristin Burr and Andrew Gunn, both producers on the 2003 film, also returned for the sequel. Weiss further credited Disney SVP of development Allison Erlikhman for being integral to maintaining the 'Freaky Friday' legacy. 'It was a combination of legacy producers and millennial executives and a millennial screenwriter, who were all like, 'We either love this movie because we worked on it' or 'We were children when it came out and are obsessed with every part of it,'' Weiss said. 'I think [Allison] being of this generation and having that close tie made her such an asset as a studio executive working on this.' (For all other millennials, Erman is also working on 'Princess Diaries 3.') The financial return of releasing 'Freakier Friday' theatrically remains to be seen, but as Gen-Zers would say, millennial women are already seated. That buying power of thirtysomething women has yet to be fully realized (or at least embraced) by Hollywood, as Weiss explained. Having a female-oriented, nostalgia-driven film in theaters has historically paid off, especially in recent years. 'We saw it with 'Barbie,' we saw it with 'Wicked.' I think having that in the same way, with how every summer there is a really exciting MCU or DC release, would make sense with these big, female-driven franchises,' Weiss said. 'They are finally being given their day in theaters in that big summer blockbuster way. It just makes me so excited as a girl who loves girly pop movies.' Hollander added, 'I think what's really happening in the zeitgeist is people are actually recognizing that female-leaning IP after 'Barbie' actually has a place in the marketplace. We've done 'Transformers,' we've done 'GI Joe,' we've done 'Sonic' and all the comic book movies. So now, what does that gaze look like for us [women]?' It was actually actress/producer Curtis who had the honor of announcing to fans everywhere that 'Freakier Friday' would (thankfully) be in theaters. The Academy Award winner wrote in 2024 teasing the release, 'Yes, you heard me…The theaters. The place we all go and enjoy a shared experience in the dark while munching popcorn and candy and laughing together and sometimes crying together. Until then.' And as for the criticisms that 'everything is a remake' nowadays, let's be real: That's not new, either. 'Freaky Friday' itself was first a 1976 film based on the book by Mary Rodgers. It later became a 1995 TV movie before being once again adapted into the 2003 film that now spurred the sequel 'Freakier Friday.' However, the 'Transformers'-esque franchises aren't complained about online the same way, if at all. 'If people want to judge female franchises with a harder lens, that's nothing new either,' Hollander said. 'As women, we're always held to a higher standard, so we'll rise to the occasion.' It works so well with Weiss' 'Freakier Friday' that a third film could even be on the horizon. 'Any version of a movie that has complicated female dynamics in a fun, silly joyous way that also has magical realism devices, I'm like, 'Sign me up.' So if that means 'Freakiest Friday,' yeah, OK,' Weiss said. Prepare for more possible flack from online trolls, though. Yet Weiss is unfazed. 'The thing that is funny to me is that there's a lot of conversation now of like, 'Oh my God, everything's a reboot, everything's a sequel. I miss the '90s and early 2000s when everything was original,' and I'm like, 'Those were also all remakes,'' she said. 'There are probably so many movies that people don't realize were actually movies from the '30s or '40s. I'm like, 'Hollywood's built on it.' Maybe we're always re-innovating, but I have embraced it. I think that all of these stories are original, and you still are creating something new. We all start with a blank page.' A Walt Disney Pictures release, 'Freakier Friday' is now in theaters. 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‘Freakier Friday' Director Nisha Ganatra Might Have Cracked the Code on the Studio Comedy
Over the course of her directing career, Nisha Ganatra has tackled nearly every stripe of comedy, from cute romances to wacky workplaces, mistaken identities to screwball send-ups. From films like 'Chutney Popcorn' and 'Late Night' to a truly staggering array of TV directing gigs ('Girls,' 'And Just Like That,' 'Dear White People,' 'Last Man on Earth,' 'Dollface,' 'Deli Boys,' and that's only a small sample), Ganatra knows funny. Over the course of her last three films, however, Ganatra has hit upon something of a compelling niche, a kind of old-fashioned comedy about women trying to make their way through the world, often coming up against generational mishaps and misunderstandings, and emerging all the better for it. More from IndieWire You Hate AI. They Teach It Anyway. Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' Reinvents Kurosawa in the Canyons and Subways of New York All of that and, yes, still funny. When I pointed out this theme in 'Late Night,' 'The High Note,' and her latest release, this week's much-anticipated 'Freakier Friday,' the already effervescent filmmaker really sparked. 'I miss those old Mike Nichols movies where it's just smart women being smart and having ambitions, and not fighting over a guy, but just wanting something out of life,' the director told IndieWire. ''High Note,' 'Late Night,' 'Freakier Friday,' it's all that, all these women have their dreams and what they want and how they want the world to be, and how they want to remain each other's allies. But it's a struggle and they have to figure it out and they have to get there together.' It's easy to see why Ganatra would gravitate toward 'Freakier Friday' then, which picks up more than twenty years after the Jamie Lee Curtis- and Lindsay Lohan-starring original, and is once again concerned with seeing women (now, four!) navigating their lives and supporting each other, all while also being body swapped. Understandably, Ganatra was a huge fan of Mark Waters' 2003 original, 'Freaky Friday.' 'I loved it so much, and not just as someone who thought they were Lindsay Lohan and watched Lindsay Lohan and wanted to be Lindsay Lohan and maybe formed a band thinking they could be like Lindsay Lohan and then realized they could not be ever like Lindsay Lohan in a band,' she said with a laugh. When producer Kristin Burr first gave Ganatra the script for 'Freakier Friday' in 2024 (after years of fans demanding a sequel), she added a little caveat. 'She said, 'OK, well, your first step is to go meet Jamie Lee Curtis and see if she thinks you're right,'' the director recalled. 'And I was like, 'Oh, my God. OK!' So I drive to Jamie Lee Curtis' house, which is just a surreal sentence to come out of my mouth. I meet her and I was so nervous, and she's such a movie star, she's so good at instantly making you feel like you're at home and she's your best friend.' Another thing that might have eased those initial nerves? The verve with which Curtis talked about the material. Mostly, that first interaction didn't sound like an interview, but a space to swap ideas. 'She told me all the things she thought made the first one special and work, and why she wanted to do this one,' Ganatra said. So what did Curtis love so much about the original? 'She loved the energy of being of the body swap, of course,' the director said. 'She had a very strange moment of telling me that she was not good at physical comedy. I did not believe her for a minute, because I was like, 'Didn't I see you on 'A Fish Called Wanda'? Haven't I seen you in 'True Lies'?' Cut to [filming the movie], 'Hey, Jamie, in this scene I thought you could crawl on the ground to hide from Chad [Michael Murray].' She's crawling on the ground. 'OK, in this scene you are gonna stop Manny from taking off by stepping in front of the car,' and she jumps on the hood of the car. She is 1,000% dedicated with her character, and I think that's what's so compelling. You can't take your eyes off of her because she's so unpredictable and so fearless that, as an audience, you're on the edge of your seat being like, 'What's she gonna do?'' The film arrives twenty-two years after the 'Freaky Friday' hit theaters in the summer of 2003, making a mint in the process (over $160 million worldwide) and apparently inspiring legions of devoted fans, including Curtis and Lohan. That fanbase? It surprised even Ganatra. 'Jamie willed this into existence, and from all the fans who willed it into existence by asking her,' she said. 'But I was surprised too. I knew millennials love-love-loved it, I knew Gen X loved, but I didn't think Gen Z knew the movie as well as they do. Gen Z is the generation that is being most misrepresented and sort of treated poorly in pop culture right now, so it was really important to me to get it right for Gen Z, not just because you'd never want Gen Z coming at you, but also because Gen Z has been so maligned.' And, yes, 'Freakier Friday' includes not one, but two Gen Z stars in Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons. This time around, Curtis' Tess Coleman is now a grandmother, and while she adores 'co-parenting' daughter Anna's (Lohan) precocious teenager Harper (Butters), Anna is struggling to find her own footing as a parent. When she falls in love with handsome new dad Eric at Harper's school (Manny Jacinto), things are looking up, but, what's that? Eric has a daughter too? And she (Hammons) and Harper hate each other? Body-swapping and life lessons, ahoy! If both Tess and Anna get (lovingly) dinged for their respective ages and all the generational stuff that comes between them, so too do the girls. Our first introduction to Harper? A sign on her bedroom that demands 'NO TRIGGERING.' How, I asked Ganatra, do you find the line between 'we're going to make fun of you too' but 'we also want you to to laugh'? 'It's always such a hard thing to explain it tonally, how do you ride that line between what's OK and what seems mean?,' she said. 'None of the humor can or should seem mean-spirited, especially in a movie like this. But for Gen Z, it was about acknowledging how smart they are and how they do really care. I do think Gen Z is gonna save us in many ways, because they truly care about trying to fix all the problems.' Ganatra applies that same sense of care to her work. Consider how tough it it is to actually make a body swap comedy work, the many perspectives that need to be considered, the points of view that need to be telegraphed, the insane performance that goes into playing somebody who is also playing somebody self. That's not easy. 'I think sometimes people are like, 'Oh, studio body swap comedy, blah, whatever,' but when you watch them, you realize it's pretty sophisticated what these actors are doing,' she said. 'They're not only playing their character, but they're also playing another character inside of their character. And if you don't believe that, the whole movie stops working instantly, right? That moment when they switch, if you don't buy that, your movie's done. It wasn't directing four actors, it was directing eight characters. So, how do I get that essence and this essence and make the most comedy joy from the experience of being in each other's lives?' For Ganatra, such considerations are part and parcel of being a good comedy director, something she does not take for granted (or for silly). 'I'm super-biased in that I think comedy people can do anything, I think comedy people can do drama, but I don't think drama people can necessarily do comedy,' the director said. 'At some point, it comes down to your taste and what you think is funny and what you don't. I think it's a matter of creating an environment where everyone feels free to pitch everything and you shoot everything. I've been wrong so many times, so you shoot everything as if you're right, and then you shoot everything as if you're wrong, and then you have the best to choose from.' Ganatra pointed specifically to another important woman in her life: her long-time editor Eleanor Infante. 'She doesn't hesitate to say, 'Hey, that doesn't work' or 'That's not funny' or 'No, we're not doing that.' When I was at NYU, I got the privilege of sitting in the editing room with Thelma Schoonmacher and Martin Scorsese, and I watched how he has to fight for every single shot that he gets. You're like, 'What's happening? Who is this woman telling Martin Scorsese that his shot his garbage?' And then you realize why the movie comes out the way it does. I'm really lucky I have an amazing editor who will tell me the truth.' Still, maybe making good comedy comes down to something deceptively simple: truly looking for what's funny. 'I think we had a lot of fun because we were all trying to make each other laugh,' Ganatra said. 'Every scene, everyone was trying to top each other with more and more fun and more and more joy. We just had a great environment, a really supportive environment where everyone let us do our most bananas ideas.' While the film is packed with both original ideas and callbacks to the original (a Pink Slip concert was a must-include for the film's producers from the start, while a final scene involving Chad Michael Murray's character was a product of the actor being available for an extra day and Ganatra really wanting to make the most of it), lots of on-the-fly ideas borne of affection for the original also make the cut. Comedy works best if you're trying something new, and you can really only do that if everyone is down to, well, clown. The filmmaker pointed to an uproarious scene in the film in which Curtis and Lohan show up at Murray's character's record store. As Lohan (as Harper as Anna) tries to rekindle the flame with Murray's Jake, Curtis (as Lily as Tess) attempts to offer advice while also hiding her face behind a slew of different records. 'I was like, 'OK, Jamie, I think you should get around the record store by covering yourself up in each place,' and she was like, 'OK, which records am I using?,'' she recalled. 'I was like, 'Well, here are the six I have cleared, and I think Sade should be when you're telling her to be quiet, and this person should be for this. And she's the one who was like, 'Oh, Britney [Spears] should be the one while I'm yelling at her and giving her advice,' which then inspired our editor to put in a Britney song, and then we just had so much fun with it. I can't believe I didn't think of that one. That was just a lucky Jamie moment on set.' She'd like more of them. As she readies for the release of the film, Ganatra was clearly still riding a wave of giddiness, one that she hopes to parlay into doing, well, more of this. 'It made me happy, so I just hope I get to keep doing it,' she said. 'A lot of women don't get to direct studio films and that is something I don't take for granted. So I'm just hopeful that this dream doesn't end and I get to keep making movies, because that's something I think we all want to do, express ourselves. I'm hopeful that this does well and we all get a chance to do it again.' A Walt Disney Pictures release, 'Freakier Friday' is in theaters on Friday, August 8. 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How ‘The Gilded Age' Finds Just Enough Space to Run a Man Over with a Carriage
We've come a long way on 'The Gilded Age' from the marquee moment of drama being Agnes (Christine Baranski) crossing from one side of the street to the other. Season 3 of the HBO series has traveled from Arizona to across the Atlantic, with of course plenty of time spent in our favorite old (and new) homes in New York. That presents a new kind of challenge for production designer Bob Shaw and his team, now that they've mastered the miles of marbling and ostentatious opera house decorations of Seasons 1 and 2. More from IndieWire The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Is Shutting Down, but Not All Hope Is Lost Sarah Michelle Gellar Starts Training for 'Buffy' Reboot with New Star Ryan Kiera Armstrong The Russell Mansion and the show's New York backlot live on Long Island — it feels appropriate that, by contrast, the Van Rhijn house is in Queens. And of course, the 'The Gilded Age' production design and locations team is still getting through their wishlist of period-appropriate homes and mansions around the East Coast. But Season 3 called for some canny set and location management, in order to fit in everything from a mining town to an English manor in between the show's existing builds. ' Once you build that set [the Russell House], taking it down and putting it back together would be almost as expensive as making it to begin with,' Shaw told IndieWire. 'The Western town was definitely a curveball [and] we ended up building it on our backlot. There had been a place where the ferry landing in New Jersey was from Season 1, and it's like, well, if we take that down, we can put the Western town there.' 'The Gilded Age' is particularly adept in its ability to stitch together location and set work without any sign of a seam. Characters can walk through a door in Newport and enter into a room that's in New York. But Shaw and his team have also always collaborated with the show's VFX department to make set extensions and the work of filling out locations equally as invisible, and that work was important for the Western mining town Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) visits, as well as its visit to showrunner Julian Fellowes's home turf. Shaw and his team were responsible for creating the fictional English country estate of Sidmouth, home of the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) and his new Duchess, Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) — 'Nothing's going to slip by [Fellowes] in that department,' Shaw said. It's a mix of the show's typical approach to cherry-picking parts of incredibly preserved, historically appropriate existing locations, buildings, and of Sidmouth was shot around Ochre Court, a mansion that was the largest in Newport for three months before The Breakers opened; it was a finalist for 'The Gilded Age' production design team for the ball sequence way back in Season 1, but ultimately was too busy being used as social-distanced classrooms at the time. 'It was on my list from the beginning, so to finally get to use it was very rewarding. I happen to think the outside is the most elegant in appearance, but we actually had to change the roof line because it has a mansard roof, which is very French and not very English,' Shaw said. Enter visual effects supervisor Douglas Purver, who went to England and LIDAR-scanned another house, so that it could be Frankensteined together with what 'The Gilded Age' production team shot. Shaw and Purver start talking about the ways in which the two departments can support each other very early on in the research and development process for each season of the show, a process they really perfected when creating the opera house in Season 2. 'A lot of it is coming up with an approach. Like, when we lay out the Western town, we have an idea of how much more there needs to be, so we show him what we're providing and then we talk about how much needs to be done in CG,' Shaw said. 'He really won't know until they have something cut together because, for example, we could say this will extend another thousand feet in this direction and then find when they do the cut that they never look in that direction.' This means the conversation has to keep going to achieve the best results, even after the production design team has technically closed up shop. For a sequence at the end of Episode 6, 'If You Want To Cook an Omelette,' when Bertha (Carrie Coon) finally leaves Sidmouth Castle, the shot starts inside the Ochre Court location, looking towards the outside, with a suitably grand porte-cochère for her carriage to pull into. Shaw happened to meet with Purver after he'd wrapped his own work on Season 3, to have lunch and see how things were going, and noticed the ceiling of the porte-cochère was flat concrete. 'I said, 'Oh, that would be coffered or something like that,' and he said, 'Well, what do you mean?' and I pulled a few references offline, and it made a big difference in the shot. It wouldn't have been there if we didn't continue to stay in touch after we'd wrapped. The coffered ceiling there was done by VFX and it takes up probably more than a third of the frame. It really was a lucky thing we planned lunch on that given day.' As for the more action-oriented sequences, of which the carriage striking of Oscar's (Blake Ritson) savior John Adams (Claybourne Elder) is but the latest, Shaw's and Purver's departments are both to blame. Obviously, only digital horses were harnessed in the hit-and-run, but the surrounding mayhem and carriages are the production team's purview. ' The prop department has been dealing with various vendors of carriages and the wagons and whatnot. There are a number of people we work with — strangely enough, in New York, it's considered part of the prop department and in Los Angeles it's part of the teamster department,' Shaw said. 'There are more collectors out there than you would like and it is easier to find them now, because of the Internet.' 'The Gilded Age' has packed its backlot tight, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't look both ways before you cross. 'The Gilded Age' is streaming on HBO. 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