Frontrunner Friday: Suburbicon, Greatest Showman Enter the Oscar Race

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This year’s CinemaCon event in Las Vegas opened up the visibility to this year’s Oscar race a bit, giving us peeks at a handful of as-of-yet unseen films and some films that aren’t even finished with production yet.

Some of that word of mouth shows up today with some movement on films like Suburbicon, The Greatest Showman, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Untitled Fashion Project. All three have release dates now; Suburbicon will come out November 3 from Paramount and both The Greatest Showman (20th Century Fox) and the PTA film (Focus Features) land on Christmas Day.

The snippet of Downsizing showed promise with most reactions being that it’s a huge diversion for director Alexander Payne.

Elements of Dunkirk, Darkest Hour and Wonderstruck were also shown, whetting the appetites of cinema goers and movie bloggers alike. Gary Oldman, Hugh Jackman, Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and George Clooney were all on hand to promote their films. Even the notoriously reclusive Judi Dench showed up via satellite to announce the trailer for her film Victoria and Abdul.

Holding back were Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, which is trying to remain as secret as possible but was described by one of the film’s stars, Michelle Pfeiffer, in Interview magazine as “esoteric.” It’s likely we won’t see or hear much of the film before summer. Same goes for Paul Thomas Anderson. Both directors have often remained mum on their projects until much closer to release.

Also missing any type of representation was our #1 film, Kathryn Bigelow’s Untitled Detroit Riots Project. The film, the first direct distribution from producer Annapurna, might be putting itself behind the game by not offering anything. The film is set to debut in August so it will miss any fall festival buzz or build and will need to get that engine running soon. The Post is just in pre-production at this time and had nothing to show. This year’s Best Picture-winning studio, A24, came up empty-handed with what looks like will be their main horse this Oscar season, Lean on Pete. That film is currently without a release date or official still.

There’s no word on what Netflix has planned for Mudbound but if it sticks by its day-and-date release as it did with Beasts of No Nation it will probably be dropped from our list quickly. Inner City, Dan Gilroy’s follow-up to Nightcrawler, is still a bit of a mystery but word is starting to lean towards a 2017 release. It’s Sony’s only real shot this year but it remains unseen whether or not they’ll go for an awards push for the Denzel Washington starrer or wait until next year and go for box office.

Here is the current ranking for Best Picture for Friday, March 31, 2017. Keep an eye (and ear) out for official April 2017 predictions and the first Oscar podcast of the new season on Monday.