One more trailer today — a sneaky one. If you take a look at the slate of films Paramount Pictures has for this year’s Oscar season, you’ll find that the studio might want to go shopping on the fall festival circuit. But for a company that isn’t huge on acquisitions, particularly for awards product, you can bet that’s not likely to happen.
What you’re left with are two films: the animated “Rise of the Guardians” out of DreamWorks and Robert Zemeckis’s first live action film in over a decade. The latter is “Flight,” starring Denzel Washington as an embattled airplane pilot in legal hot water following his crash-landing a commercial flight — and saving many lives in the process.
The smart play for Paramount this year might just be to focus on a smaller slice rather than split its focus across a wide spectrum. Indeed, the last few (post-Vantage) years have seen collectives like “Star Trek”/”Up in the Air,” “The Fighter”/”Shutter Island”/”True Grit” and “Hugo”/”Super 8″/”Young Adult” chew up that focus (not that they haven’t come out with plenty to show — four Best Picture nods in those three years, after all).
The trailer for “Flight” was launched — quietly — today on Apple and is strongly constructed. But it’s aiming for commercial value, where, as I hear it, the film is a little more dialed in and dramatic than that representation. But it could be something worth paying attention to when the season really starts to heat up (and as the film releases right in the middle of it). Could Washington be in the hunt for his first nomination since winning Best Actor over 10 years ago in “Training Day?”
We shall see.
I’ll get into this a little bit more next week when we offer up an initial preview of the upcoming Oscar season. For now, have a glimpse of “Flight” below and tell us what you think in the comments section or by rating the trailer yourself above. The film opens in theaters November 2.