“Rev Road” A Possible Oscar Spoiler?
“Revolutionary Road,” the movie adaptation of Richard Yates’s first novel, which is set in the mid-1950s, was shot this summer, mostly in Connecticut: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star as a married couple with two young children. After the project wrapped, director Sam Mendes and Winslet, his real-life wife, spent some time at their Cotswolds place outside of London, where Mendes worked on editing the project. Here’s an interesting prospect: when Mendes and Winslet return to their New York home this month, he shows his rough cut to his producer, Scott Rudin, and people from Dreamworks and Paramount, who are releasing the film. They all love it so much that they decide to rush its release date to this Christmas instead of its tentative late-2008 date. Such a move would throw a wrench into the Oscar derby the way that the entry of Al Gore into the Presidential race would upend that sweepstakes.
As much as I would relish such a strategy change, not least because it would turn DiCaprio and Winslet into instant Academy Award front-runners, here’s one reason why it probably won’t happen: there’s another New England drama called “Reservation Road” that is being released this fall. Why would a studio that has invested in Mendes’s prestige picture want to risk the marketing confusion that a pushed-up release would cause? On the other hand, if “Reservation Road” comes and goes quickly, any marketing confusion might abate by Christmas, just in time for “Revolutionary Road” to swoop in. Stay tuned.
