This past weekend, A Star Is Born, the third remake of the 1937 classic, launched in wide release. Over the course of a month, during which two major festivals screened the film, A Star is Born built up buzz through acclaim and the star power of its lead actors; many critics see Oscar nominations for Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper as foregone conclusions, and in a Best Picture category whose expanded capacity has allowed for more long-range predictions, the film seems destined to score a slot on the shortlist for the Academy’s highest honor.
Warner Brothers, the distributor for A Star is Born, was projecting a respectable $30 million debut last Wednesday, then revised that number to $35 million when the film over-performed in Thursday previews. A Star is Born ultimately made more: $43 million from Friday to Sunday, almost $20 million higher than the debut of August’s rom-com juggernaut Crazy Rich Asians. Whether that film’s staying power can be matched remains to be seen, but a multiplier half as good as Crazy Rich Asians would propel A Star is Born to a $140 million domestic total, and there is ample reason to believe a higher final tally, based on both critical and audience reception.
Success, in box office terms, is what the Academy Awards need. Though cord cutting was partly to blame for the 2018 telecast’s alarming viewership decline, the nominees proved a larger problem, as very few people saw them. Out of the nine films vying for Best Picture, Dunkirk made the most money, with a $190 million domestic take. Only one other film crossed the $100 million mark (Get Out). The highest rated Oscars telecast ever played host to Titanic’s Best Picture win, reflecting the fact that $600 million in domestic ticket sales translated to an eager and committed group of fans, who were dedicated to following the film’s competitive accomplishments.
Since Titanic, the Academy has increasingly rewarded smaller budget, lower grossing, and often independently-distributed films that enamor critics (on the same festival circuit A Star is Born is currently following) and draw attention to industry upstarts. The fact that a film’s Oscar nominations and wins are able to significantly expand its audience, when it would otherwise circumvent the L.A. and New York arthouse scenes, speaks to the sizable influence of a firmly entrenched organization still governed by classical Hollywood norms even as the industry it’s representing undergoes transformation.
That ability of the Oscars to elevate independent cinema is not gone; on the contrary, almost all of 2018’s nominees experienced solid runs mostly on the premise of being considered for Academy Awards, which is to say they were very good. Much of the Oscars’ cultural power, however, rests in the ceremony itself—the grandeur and appeal of movie stars, the visual representation of “making it” in an industry recognized as cutthroat and unforgiving, the thrill of waiting to see whose name lies inside the golden envelope after months of speculation. Maybe not so much if mainstream audiences’ favorite movies didn’t pass the first round of cuts.
Enter the Academy’s crisis, and a proposed solution. This past August, it was announced that a “popular film” category would be introduced at next year’s Oscars, with the specifics on what quantifies or qualifies “popular” undetermined. Other changes included handing out below-the-line awards during commercial breaks and moving the show up to January, to stymy awards fatigue. The concept of a “popular” category provoked the most outrage, for what critics like Richard Brody of the New Yorker described as the Academy attempting to “siphon off some of the commercial benefits of the awards—to redistribute Oscar-related money upward from independent producers to the studios, from productions costing and yielding tens of millions to ones costing and yielding hundreds of millions.” Chadwick Boseman, who played the titular character in Marvel’s Black Panther, voiced a different kind of concern. He feared that a “popular” category would delegitimize the quality of films that were successful and acclaimed, a feigning Academy act supported by meaningless statuettes. “If there's a campaign, it's for best picture, and that's all there is to it,” Boseman said.
The proposition of a popular category has since been retracted, though the Academy remains likely to instigate significant changes that it thinks, however misguidedly, will reorient the Oscars’ appeal toward fleeing viewers. A Star is Born is not a long-term game-changer, as it is obviously only in competition for next year’s awards, but it might at least rejuvenate the show’s prospects for the coming season. Beyond the film’s rapturous reception, which arguably every Best Picture contender of the last fifteen years has shared, A Star is Born is accessible on a level that fellow festival darlings—namely The Favourite, If Beale Street Could Talk and Roma—aren’t. Those films are all period pictures, which famously seduce Academy voters but are much less appealing to mass audiences. (Titanic was, as in many respects, an exception.)
The Favourite concerns an ailing Queen Anne in 18th century England, and the competition between two schemers for her attention. It’s a black comedy that’s been described as “more commercial” than director Yorgos Lanthimos’ previous work, like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The Favourite is not what one would call widely marketable. If Beale Street Could Talk and Roma are both films directed by Oscar nominees, but the former is an adaptation of a James Baldwin novel whose plot revolves around a rape accusation, and the latter is a foreign-language love letter to a neighborhood in Mexico City. Neither film has A-list stars attached in top-billed roles; in fact, Roma’s main character is a non-actor.
A Star is Born, on the other hand, features Bradley Cooper, a long-dependable leading man, and Lady Gaga, a pop sensation whose first foray onto the silver screen has been receiving media coverage since Cooper first disclosed that the film was in development. A Star is Born is also essentially a remake, when reboots have recently shown considerable box office power, if for nothing except their familiarity. The film’s musical components reflect potential for album synergy, especially given the recent success of The Greatest Showman, whose soundtrack is currently the best-selling album of 2018. That film, along with La La Land, renewed interest in musicals, and A Star is Born has the advantage of being largely about country music, extending its reach to viewers who might have shown reluctance toward conventional Broadway-esque songs and dance numbers. On top of all of this, the massive promotional campaign Warner Brothers launched in support of A Star is Born involves few critic’s quotes or festival references, and the most prominent billboards comprise only Gaga, Cooper, and a sparkling title. The posters are encouraging attendance not based on professionals’ opinions but a compelling premise, almost like blockbuster posters do.
The potential A Star is Born possesses places it in the context of the debacle over how to drive interest in the Oscars, which it itself is a more urgent version of the decades-old conversation about the mentality that drives Academy voters’ decisions. Voters are fundamentally snobbish, inclined to want to generate interest rather than reiterate previously-established interest. Rarely do stereotypical voter tastes, seen in films like The Favourite and Roma, overlap with the aesthetic and narrative sensibilities of more widely-seen films.
It is unlikely that Black Panther will win in any major category come February 2019, even if it were nominated, and awards for costume design and special effects don’t drive higher ratings. Dunkirk, while successful at the Oscars, only picked up technical wins, and was not considered a frontrunner for most of the awards season.
It seems that the real way to engage audiences is to present them with realistic prospects for a popular film’s victory—no one was surprised when Titanic swept, and to a lesser extent, when La La Land (a smaller but still stunning box office triumph) almost did. This is why A Star Is Born’s performance will be important. While other 2018 festival darlings appear just as niche as past contenders, A Star is Born possesses true potential to assemble a following, stoking the kind of investment that has viewers tuning into the next Oscars telecast, where the film’s quality will be affirmed most definitively, in gold.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.