The Monuments Men Out of Oscar Race

The most surprising news of awards season so far came the Sony, who announced yesterday that George Clooney much hyped The Monuments Men will be pushed back to early 2014 aka the graveyard shift in Hollywood’s calendar. The word from the studio is that director and star Clooney is not able to finish the movie in time, which will come as a blow considering they already had an awards consultant on hand.

Instead the movie has been pushed to the worst performing third of the year for Best Picture nominees. From the 114 nominees between 1992 and 2012, 4 were released in March and 0 in January, February or April. None of these 4 won the Oscar. I still maintain that great films get noticed anyway, but it’s just practical that studios release their films at the end of the year when ballots are being sent and amalgamate their marketing budgets. So this decision either means Sony have given up on the film, even for next year, or they have a really difficult and expensive sell on their hands.

However we look at it, Sony PR peeps need to start doing some damage control on this one.