If the Oscars had an award for Best Food Orgy, Sausage Party would be a shoo-in. Unfortunately, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has stopped reading my letters, so that’s probably not going to happen next year, or ever. The best chance that Sausage Party, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s food gone wild computer-animated comedy that made $135 million on a $19 million budget, has at taking home an Oscar is in the Best Animated Feature category, which is why Sony is going all-out with a huge marketing campaign.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Sony’s push for the film will launch with a Nov. 1 screening and cocktail party at Westwood’s iPic Theater, with Rogen and one of the film’s two directors, Conrad Vernon, in attendance.” Members of the Academy’s “short films and feature animation branch” and Hollywood Foreign Press Association will also be there, which is why Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman is already saying all the right things. “Academy members are way smarter and more forward-thinking than people realize,” he said. “They want to recognize bold, original, risky breakthroughs, and that’s what Sausage Party is, however subversive. Plus, it’s just plain cool.”
Best Animated Feature was introduced in 2001, when Shrek somehow beat Monsters, Inc. Since then, the trophy has almost exclusively gone to a Disney or Pixar title, including a staggering eight out of the last nine years (the only exception: Paramount’s Rango). So it will be difficult for Sausage Party to sneak in, let alone win: Zootopia and Finding Dory are locks, and Kubo and the Two Strings and Moana will probably be nominated, too. That’s four spots already, and none of those films featuring a talking douche named Douche.
But Sony is still going to try, with “lined up print and digital advertising in the trades and other publications that reach awards voters who get to cast an animation-related ballot.” The studio also plans to submit “The Great Beyond,” with music from eight-time winner Alan Menken, for Best Original Song.
Hey, it (almost) worked for South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut.
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)
