Numlock Awards: Everything Everywhere All at Once Could Expand the Oscar Calendar

Early bird gets the Oscar.

Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter, and it’s back! Every week, join Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico as they break down the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night. Today’s edition comes from Walter.

Great show! We’ll have way more about the Oscars this week — remember to send in stuff for the mailbag — but wanted to get this up because it’s a really cool thing about the Everything Everywhere All at Once win that I think is cool.

In addition to being historic for a lot of reasons, one thing to note is that it’s also way, way off the beaten path when it comes to the traditional Oscar release corridor. This movie came out in March, while most studios drop their Oscar bait in the last quarter of the year.

It’s rare enough that a nominee comes from the early parts of the year, but when it comes to winners it’s been decades, not since Silence of the Lambs that we’ve seen a winner this early.

Note that this is only the calendar year of the Oscars we’re talking, this leaves out a bunch of 2020 nominees (and a winner) that technically were released in 2021.

Other early winners include Chariots of Fire, Patton and The Godfather.

I think this is a good thing. The end of the year can be a gigantic mess and suffer from overcrowding and I think that having only two movie seasons — Blockbuster Season in summer and Oscar Season in late fall — is not great for audiences. Much like studios have realized that you can release big tentpoles in in October, December, and even early spring opened up the calendar for big expensive movies, it stands to reason that smart movies with Oscar on the mind may want to rethink cramming their releases into the autumn.

Shout out to my friend Tyler Lauletta, a conversation with whom sparked this.

And like I said, we are doing another Oscars mailbag for next week! Send in questions, comments, feedback or thoughts by replying to this email or to awards@numlock.news today!