Is ‘The Batman’ the First 2023 Oscar Contender?

Clayton Davis This past weekend proved to be a wild ride on the awards circuit.The Producers Guild of America Awards bestowed their top honors upon Apple Original Film’s “CODA” on Saturday night while the Cinema Audio Society went with Warner Bros’ “Dune.”At the Writers Guild of America Awards, several of the Oscar nominees for screenplay – “Belfast” (Kenneth Branagh), “Drive My Car” (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe), “The Lost Daughter” (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and “The Power of the Dog” (Jane Campion) – were not eligible for recognition. So instead, the group went with “Don’t Look Up” from Adam McKay and David Sirota in original, with “CODA” tacking another trophy for adapted following BAFTA.And the final shoe to drop was the American Society of Cinematographers delivering Greig Fraser (“Dune”) the statuette, his second win following “Lion” (2016).

Gregg Goldstein This year’s Academy Award nominations are dominated by films from deep-pocketed studios, specialty divisions and streamers. Yet as most 2021 indies were sidelined to the Spirit Awards, a few such as “Drive My Car,” “Flee,” “The Worst Person in the World” and “Writing With Fire” managed to score noms in David vs.

Warner Bros/DC’s The Batman has winged its way past the half a billion dollar mark worldwide to become the fourth highest-grossing studio release of the pandemic era. The global total is $505.8M through Wednesday, and there’s still plenty of gas left in the Batmobile.

Tim Gray Senior Vice President“Audible,” an Oscar nominee for documentary short, features a winning combination: great filmmaking and a great subject matter.Director Matt Ogens had been waiting for 12 years to tell the story about the Maryland School for the Deaf and their championship football team. However, he doesn’t consider it a sports documentary: “It’s a coming-of-age story and some of it is unique, some of it is universal.”However, he had trouble getting funding: “We had a lot of doors shut in our faces by people thinking there wasn’t an audience for this.”During that time, Ogens would check in regularly with people at the school when he visited his family in the Maryland-D.C.

In its sophomore outing, Warner Bros/DC’s The Batman kept a firm grip on the international box office, dropping just 42% to add $66.6M from 76 offshore markets. That brings the overseas cume through Sunday to $224.7M for $463.2M global. As the Robert Pattinson-starrer heads to $500M worldwide this week, in like-for-like markets and using today’s exchange rates, it’s currently tracking 132% ahead of pandemic comp Godzilla Vs Kong and is 44% above Wonder Woman, 36% ahead of The Dark Knight and 24% over Justice League.

Jon Burlingame editorThe Academy’s 400-member music branch singled out an especially diverse group this year, including composers born in England, Spain and Germany, along with two Americans – one of whom is not only female but also a person of color.They also cast a wide net in terms of genre: a comedy, two dramas, a science-fiction epic and an animated family film. And while “Dune” has long been the favorite of Oscar prognosticators, don’t count out critically praised “Power of the Dog,” the colorful backdrop of “Encanto,” or Academy voters’ frequent use of the score category as consolation prize: a convenient way to reward a film that won’t win anything else.“Don’t Look Up”New York composer Nicholas Britell received his third Oscar nomination for the music of Adam McKay’s sci-fi social satire: an eclectic brew of big-band jazz, traditional orchestral sounds, considerable electronics and a wild collection of offbeat instruments from toy piano to banjo and mandolin.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentHamaguchi Ryusuke’s Oscar-nominated “Drive My Car” took eight prizes at the 45th Japan Academy Film Prize ceremony, held on Friday at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takawana in Tokyo.In addition to the best picture award, the film won best director (Hamaguchi), best screenplay (Hamaguchi and co-writer Oe Takamasa) and best actor (Nishijima Hidetoshi). The film also scooped prizes for cinematography, lighting, editing and sound recording.Meanwhile, best actress went to Arimura Kasumi for her work in the hit romantic drama “We Made a Beautiful Bouquet.”Best animation honors were awarded to Watanabe Ayumu’s “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko,”  a heart-warming coming-of-age film set in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.

A column chronicling events and conversations on the awards circuit. 

When the Oscar nominations dropped on February 8, one of the most surprising and celebrated inclusions was the Bhutanese feature Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom, only the second ever movie submitted by the small Asian nation.

Deadline has launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: The Nominees, this past weekend’s showcase of 24 Oscar-nominated films and their stars, creatives and craftspeople talking about their roads to the Academy Awards.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterRobert Pattinson’s “The Batman” towered over international box office charts, collecting $120 million from 74 overseas markets.After debuting to $128.5 million in North America, the Warner Bros. comic book adventure has generated $248.5 million globally to date.

An Oscar nominee for Best International Feature, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom marks a first for the country of Bhutan, which has only ever submitted two films for consideration (and actually entered Lunana two years in a row following its earlier disqualification on a technicality). Filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji and star Sherab Dorji joined us for Contenders Film: The Nominees to discuss the making of the movie, a charming story of a teacher who is reluctantly transferred to a remote village and ends up learning quite a bit throughout his journey.

Contenders Film: The Nominees, a one-stop-shop experience featuring a smörgåsbord of Oscar-nominated talent discussing their top-tier projects, kicks off Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. PT as a virtual event, the latest in Deadline’s rapidly expanding Contenders series. Stars, creatives and craftspeople behind 24 films will take part in moderated panels discussing the roads that led them to the doorstep of the Academy Awards.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorAs Disney’s “Encanto” continues to break music chart records, a much more personal moment stands out to composer Germaine Franco. It’s a viral moment, captured on social media, of a little boy who lights up at realizing that he looks just like the young character Antonio. “It’s so beautiful because he sees himself on screen,” she tells Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast.“Encanto” features eight original songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, while Franco’s score cuts in and out of the songs, evoking a sense of magical realism.

Warner Bros/DC’s The Batman is just beginning to spread its wings overseas, and has a running international box office total of $5.3M across two days and from only eight markets. The Matt Reeves-directed Robert Pattinson-starrer is adding 47 markets today and a further 19 on Friday.

President Joe Biden is addressing the nation for the first time.