Variety has confirmed that Focus Features is mounting a major Oscars campaign for Inde Navarrette’s breakout performance in “Obsession,” with her being pushed for Best Actress.
The studio will also campaign director Curry Barker for Best Director, Original Screenplay, and Film Editing, signaling that it views the low-budget horror-romance—which has earned more than $505M worldwide on a $750K budget—as a serious awards contender.
We all saw this coming, but now it’s been made official. Hell, given the weak slate of actress contenders this year, I think Navarrette actually has a decent chance of winning.
No, really, there are barely any contenders in this category. Julianne Moore (“The Debut”) is the only other performance being talked about that much, and her film has yet to be screened. It’s actually come to the point where Universal, seeing an opening, is weighing campaigning Anne Hathaway (“The Odyssey”) as Lead Actress—which she is clearly not.
As for the other categories Barker’s film could crash, “Obsession” probably won’t win Best Picture, but a nomination alone would be seen as a huge victory. Horror has historically faced challenges with the Academy, but films like “Get Out,” “The Substance,” and “The Silence of the Lambs” show that genre barriers can be overcome when a film breaks through culturally.
Just the fact that we’re talking about the possibility of Oscar nominations is wild. After seeing the film at TIFF last year, and even with the positive buzz that came out of that screening, I never would have imagined that this midnight movie would be in this position almost a year later.
Oh, and Barker has already shot a new film, “Anything But Ghosts,” starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, which recently tested like gangbusters in Pasadena. Word out of that screening was very promising.
The upcoming series is being touted as one of the most expensive shows ever made, with a jaw-dropping $2 billion budget. That’s around $300M per season.