Oscar Date + Early Predictions: Another Meryl Streep?

Meryl Streep in Into the Woods: Oscar date and several early predictions.

Oscar date & early predictions

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC has announced the Oscar 2015 dates. The Academy Awards ceremony will air live on ABC on Feb. 22 – or about ten days earlier than the Oscar 2014 ceremony.

Key Oscar 2015 dates are as follows:

• Saturday, November 8, 2014 The Governors Awards (where Honorary awards are handed out).
• Wednesday, December 3, 2014 Official Screen Credits and music submissions due to the Academy.
• Monday, December 29, 2014 Oscar 2015 nominations voting begins 8 a.m. PT.
• Thursday, January 8, 2015 Oscar 2015 nominations voting ends 5 p.m. PT.
• Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015 Oscar 2015 nominations announced.
• Monday, Feb. 2, 2015 Oscar 2015 Nominees Luncheon.
• Friday, February 6, 2015 Final voting for the Oscar 2015 winners begins 8 a.m. PT.
• Saturday, February 7, 2015 Scientific and Technical Awards.
• Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015 Final voting for the Oscar 2015 winners ends 5 p.m. PT.
• Oscar Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015 87th Academy Awards begins 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT.

As in previous years, the Oscar 2015 ceremony will be held at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in the clogged heart of Hollywood. In the United States, the Oscarcast will be televised live by ABC. Additionally, the Oscar show will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories around the world.

Oscar 2015 predictions

It’s too early to tell, of course, but … here are a few possibilities – depending on when some of these movies reach Los Angeles screens – in the various Oscar 2015 categories:

• Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, with Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.
• Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods, with Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine.
• Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, with Joaquin Phoenix.
• Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn.
• Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco, with Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth.
• Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz.
• J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year, with Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Albert Brooks, Alessandro Nivola, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Christopher Abbott.
• Bennett Miller’s 2014 Cannes Film Festival entry Foxcatcher, with Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo.
• Michel Hazanavicius’ loose remake of Fred Zinnemann’s The Search, a Cannes 2014 entry with Bérénice Bejo (apparently in the old Montgomery Clift role), Annette Bening.
• David Fincher’s Gone Girl, with Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Missi Pyle.
• Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, featuring Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Tom Wlaschiha, Roger Ashton-Griffiths.
• David Michôd’s The Rover, with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson.
• Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Mark Strong.
• Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, with Jack O’Connell, Garret Hedlund, Domhnall Gleeson, Jai Courtney.
• Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, with Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, F. Murray Abraham.
• David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, in competition for the Palme d’Or, and starring Robert Pattinson, John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska.
• Damien Chazelle’s 2014 Sundance winner winner Whiplash, with Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons.

And in the technical categories:

• Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, with Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Jackman, Ellen Page, Halle Berry.
• Joe and Anthony Russo’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with Chris Evans, Robert Redford, Scarlett Johansson.
• Gareth Edward’s Godzilla, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Andy Serkis, Juliette Binoche, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe.

Oscar 2014 winners

Oscar 2014 winners included Best Picture for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Best Foreign Language Film for Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, Best Director Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity, Best Actress Cate Blanchett for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, Best Actor Matthew McConaughey for Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club, Best Supporting Actress Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave, Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club, Best Original Screenplay for Spike Jonze for Her, and Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave.

Meryl Streep Into the Woods photo: Walt Disney Studios.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will return as Oscar show producers

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will be back as producers of the 2015 Oscar ceremony, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced yesterday, April 21. This will mark Zadan and Meron’s third consecutive year as Oscar producers. In the United States, the 87th Academy Awards ceremony will air live on ABC on Oscar Sunday, Feb. 22.

Last March 2, the Zadan- and Meron-produced 2014 Oscar telecast brought back Ellen DeGeneres, whose performance as Oscar host drew mixed reviews – some loved the pizza; others hated it. Besides pizza delivery, the Oscar telecast also featured the presence of veterans Kim Novak and Sidney Poitier; musical performances by U2, Pharrell Williams, and Idina Menzel (a.k.a. “Adele Nazeem,” as per John Travolta); in addition to a tribute to The Wizard of Oz performed by Pink – while Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, sat in the audience and, somewhat ironically, was the butt of a tasteless DeGeneres joke.

Last but not least, the 2014 Oscar ceremony featured a selfie starring Ellen DeGeneres, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Spacey, the right side of Jared Leto’s face, and – somewhat curiously – Lupita Nyong’o’s brother. DeGeneres’ stellar selfie broke Twitter’s retweet record – generating 32.8 million views – and led to tons of publicity for Samsung, the Oscar ceremony sponsor that may (according to various reports) or may not (according to Samsung) have engendered the stunt.

Whether or not you retweeted DeGenere’s Oscar selfie, bear in mind that in the U.S. the 2014 Oscar ceremony drew an “average audience” of 45.4 million viewers, delivering a 13.7 rating among adults 18-49, and reaching 74.6 million viewers who watched at least 6 minutes of the Oscar show – the best figures since 2004, the year Peter Jackson’s blockbuster The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was voted Best Picture of the year.

There’s more: According to the Academy’s press release, Oscar 2014 was the most-watched entertainment telecast in the last decade, attracting “the biggest viewership in 14 years.” Oscar-related social media activity included “more than one billion impressions” on Twitter and “25 million interactions” on Facebook.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron movies, TV shows, plays

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron’s movie, television, and stage productions have earned a total of six Academy Awards, 11 Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, one Grammy Award, five Golden Globes, and two Peabody Awards. Zadan and Meron executive produced Rob Marshall’s 2002 Best Picture winner Chicago, starring Richard Gere, Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Queen Latifah, and which won a total of six Oscars out of its 13 nominations.

Zadan and Meron’s handful of other movie credits include Craig Brewer’s Footloose (2011), featuring Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough; Adam Shankman’s Hairspray (2007), with John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Marsden, and Zac Efron; and Rob Reiner’s The Bucket List (2007), with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Additionally, back in 1984 Zadan also produced the original, Herbert Ross-directed Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer.

For television, Zadan and Meron executive produced last year’s hit The Sound of Music Live!. Among their other TV credits are the miniseries Bonnie and Clyde; the TV series Smash and Drop Dead Diva; and the TV movies Steel Magnolias, A Raisin in the Sun, Annie, Serving in Silence, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Brian’s Song, Anna Nicole, and Gypsy.

On Broadway, they recently produced revivals of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette, and the Tony-winning Promises, Promises, with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth.

Zadan and Meron’s upcoming projects include executive producing the TV musical Peter Pan Live!, while their new MTV comedy series, Happyland, premieres this summer. For the big screen, they are producing Monster High, based on the Mattel franchise; a musical based on the Beach Boy’s song catalog; and a film version of the Bob Fosse-directed, Roger O. Hirson-Stephen Schwartz Broadway musical hit Pippin, which back in the ’70s featured the likes of Jill Clayburgh, John Rubinstein, and Ben Vereen.

Oscar 2014 winners

Among the winners at the 2014 Oscar ceremony were Best Director Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity, Best Actress Cate Blanchett for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, Best Actor Matthew McConaughey for Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club, Best Supporting Actress Lupita Nyong’o for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club, Best Picture 12 Years a Slave (the one category using the preferential voting system to select the winner), Best Foreign Language Film for Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, Best Original Screenplay for Spike Jonze for Her, and Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave.

The 2015 Oscar ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in, where else, Hollywood. The Oscar telecast will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron photo: Richard Harbaugh / Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club.

Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 2015 Awards dates announced

The Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 2015 Awards ceremony honoring make-up artists and hair stylists in movies, television, commercials, and live theater will be held on Saturday, Feb. 14, at Paramount Studios. IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) Local 706 President Susan Cabral-Ebert announced the Guild’s awards ceremony date earlier today, May 7.

The submissions and voting timeline for the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 2015 Awards is the following:

• Submissions Open – Tuesday, October 14, 2014
• Submissions Close – Friday, November 21, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. (PT)
• Voting for Nominations Begins – Monday, December 8, 2014
• Voting for Nominations Close – Tuesday, January 6, 2015
• Nominations Announced – Thursday, January 8, 2015
• Final Ballot Voting Begins – Monday, January 19, 2015
• Final Ballot Voting Close – Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. (PT)
• Winners Announced at the Local 706 Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards – Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015

In addition to the 2015 nominees in the various categories, the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 2015 Awards will also bestow the Distinguished Artisan Award and two Lifetime Achievement Awards honoring Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists. The recipients will be announced in the near future.

2014 Academy Awards and Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards

Among the nominees for the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 2014 Awards in the motion picture categories were Candace Neal and Robert Stevenson for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey; Carla White and Björn Rehbein for John Wells’ August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts; Kathrine Gordon and Michelle Johnson for David O. Russell’s American Hustle, starring Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jeremy Renner; and Gloria Pasqua Casny and Jules Holdren for Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer.

The 2014 Oscar nominees in the Best Make-Up and Hair category were Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews for Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club, starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Garner; Stephen Prouty for Jeff Tremaine’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, starring Johnny Knoxville; and (make-up department head) Joel Harlow and Gloria Pasqua Casny for The Lone Ranger. The winner was Dallas Buyers Club.

More information about the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild can be found at www.local706.org.

Jared Leto Dallas Buyers Club photo: Focus Features.