THR’s Rebecca Keegan and Scott Feinberg are reporting that the Academy “is developing a streaming service of its own that would enable distributors to stream their own Best Picture Oscar hopefuls to voters,” this would cost them $10,000-15,000 per film, cheap-ish for their all-too-consuming bottom-line.
“The matter was the hot topic of discussion at an April 11 meeting at Academy headquarters,” THR reports. In attendance were “several dozen publicists who work on Oscar campaigns each year.”
The thought of an “Academy app” had surfaced a few years ago when Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells had reported that the academy were working on an app that would allow AMPAS votersto watch all the films in awards contention in high-def — a genius plan that would stop the leaking of screeners on piracy sites. The app would be configured in such a way that recording the screeners would be impossible to do.
This also is another death nail in the coffin of physical media.
Reeves is supposed to direct, David E. Kelley is writing, and just like that, Apple got cold feet — the usual “creative differences” excuse is being cited in the report, and maybe that was indeed the case.