Wednesday, December 13, 2006

BAFTA change the rules

According to IMDb, BAFTA have changed the rules as to which films they can consider for nominations. Rather than allowing films released up to the end of March to be considered, only films released prior to the awards ceremony will now be eligible. As next year's ceremony is on February 11th, there's a little bit of a hoo and a ha going on because Letters From Iwo Jima, The Good Shepherd and The Good German all have release dates after that in the UK. According to Adam Dawtrey, from Variety, "This strikes at the very heart of the question of what commercial impact BAFTA actually has for distributors."

Actually, for me, it strikes at the heart of why the UK has to wait so fucking long for movies that are out in the US before Christmas. And in general in fact. It drives me absolutely batshit when movies are held up for seemingly no reason. In a time when the industry is bleating about piracy and the money it's costing them, to me it doesn't make fundamental economic sense to delay the release of high profile movies. That's just going to drive people to obtain them illegally. When it's so cheap and easy to do that, why would people wait?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What exactly ARE the reasons movies have awkward release dates in foreign countries? I mean, I realize tons of American films don't open anywhere but here (and vice versa for, say, some Brit films), but why would a bonzo smash film like the latest 007 film come with delays? Is it a licensing thing? Some kind of country-to-country legal framework? Is it poor planning on the part of movie producers?