Has there ever been a zombie movie that started out in Poland? Well, we might be getting one now.
Variety is reporting on a talk that Academy president John Bailey; board of governors and the film editors branch member Carol Littleton, ; and Brooke Boles, associate director of membership and awards gave at the EnergaCamerimage Film Festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Talk made its way to the recent changes in Academy rules that were supposed to go into effect this year.
This included the proposed award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film that was highly criticized the moment it was announced. So much so that the Academy scrapped the idea…or so we thought.
Bailey says that the award was only tabled for this year, not killed outright, and there is still interest by the Academy of awarding popular films with their own award.
The speakers admitted that the new Oscar was proposed in response to lower rating for the Oscar telecast. Littleton said that the problem is that the smaller, artistic films that the Academy loves to nominate typically have more limited released, often times not even reaching parts of the country that the Academy relies on to watch its Oscar ceremony.
Of course, the common sense solution to this problem is to nominate more popular films for Best Picture, which Bailey believes is likely to happen for the upcoming awards. If that happens, the Academy will watch the races and the ratings for the telecast to decide whether or not to reinstate the Best Popular Film Oscar.
More on this as it develops.
