EXCLUSIVE: No Nominees at This Year's Oscars

Oscar season has begun in earnest, with the Telluride and Toronto film festivals behind us and the New York Film Festival ongoing, but eager movie-lovers and awards prognosticators are in for the most predictable season in Academy Award history.  While the latest news from the Academy is sure to rile up the "gurus of gold," it's also completely understandable, and excitement for the February 22 event should reach new heights once Oscar fans have some time to digest.

This morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (AMPAS to those in the know) announced that their previously announced calendar for this year's Oscars has undergone a major shift.  In previous years, dating back to the awards' inception in the 1920s, a list of nominees across a slew of categories was first announced, and then a winner in each category was chosen and announced, usually on a live telecast that reached billions of viewers worldwide.  The nominations stage is what makes Oscar predicting a year-long pastime for those who take interest in rich people patting each other on the back; whenever a semi-decent movie drops, people can argue about its Oscar prospects for five minutes, which is the approximate longest possible collective internet attention span, according to a recent study out of Yale.

But those debates will now come to an end, as AMPAS has decided to do away with the nomination process altogether.  It's a shocking move, as it will surely lead to a sense of anticlimax on the night of the show, which Such Moving Pictures has learned exclusively will look nothing like any previous Oscar ceremony.  There won't even be an air of mystery about who the winners of the night will be.  When rumbles of this announcement were surfacing amongst industry gossip, many thought that winners would be determined in some secret, perhaps magical, way, then announced without viewers having any clue what was even in contention.  Not so.  We already know exactly where all the trophies are going, and they're all being collected by a single film.

Ladies and gentleman, this is the year of Dracula Untold.

The Oscars this year are all going to Gary Shore's brilliant retelling of the classic vampiric tale, which should come as no surprise to anybody who has seen the film, seen the trailer, or has any working knowledge about the history of the Academy Awards.  Vampire movies have famously dominated the Oscars for decades, while historical dramas and stuffy biopics have been left out to dry; we will not soon forget the five Best Picture Oscars taken by the Twilight quintilogy (quintology? five-some?).  AMPAS President Cheryl Boone Isaacs says, "Once we had our first Academy screening of Dracula Untold, we knew what we had to do.  It was clear that the entire night needed to be reconfigured to celebrate this achievement in film."

There was some debate within the Academy about precisely how to honor Dracula Untold, with some suggesting that a giant Oscar (perhaps with the face carved into the likeness of the film's star, Luke Evans) be given to the film, while lesser films such as Birdman and Foxcatcher duke it out for the tiny, meaningless awards, which would have been renamed to reflect their lessened honor (for example, Best Picture That Isn't Dracula Untold).  "But we didn't want Dracula Untold to have to share the spotlight," Isaacs reveals in an exclusive interview with Such Moving Pictures.  "Why tarnish its legacy, which is already the stuff of legends?"  A giant Luke Evans Oscar will still be made and handed to Shore as a symbolic gesture of the film's all-time status, but is will also receive all of the other Oscars.  The normal, dumb ones that are beneath its status, but it'll take anyway because, why not?

Many will be quick to point out how difficult it must be to award the film in every category, considering that it isn't apparently eligible across-the-board.  The most nominations a film ever received was a mere 14 (both Titanic and All About Eve hit that number), so for Dracula Untold to take home 24 Oscars (plus its big one) is historical, unprecedented, and quite frankly, unrepeatable.  (We'll revisit that last claim when Dracula Untold 2: Less Told, More Blood releases.)  Boones admits that it was tricky to determine how to "fairly" dole out all of Dracula Untold's deserved bounty, but after "an hour or two" of brainstorming, they figured it out.  "Dracula Untold can receive both screenplay Oscars because it's such an original take on existing material, and it's a documentary in the sense that it's a record of the greatest filmmaking ever," she explains.  "There's enough CGI for us to call it animated, and the Spanish dub is getting the prize for foreign filmmaking."  The Foreign Film prize was the most contested of all, narrowly beating out the Hungarian and Hebrew dubs.

As for the trio of trophies that go to short films, they'll go to the trailer for Dracula Untold, which is "way fucking better than most full-length movies," Isaacs announces with a chuckle.  The AMPAS President is penning a song herself to tack onto the film's - which hits theaters October 10 - closing credits.  It's tentatively titled "Bloodbath Wit My Boo," and will be sung by Adele.

Isaacs' proposal to dedicate the 87th Academy Awards, which will be referred to henceforth as A Dracula Untold Jubilee, was met with unanimous support from Academy members.  I asked a number of them to speak with me anonymously, and they all refused pointblank, saying some variation of: "I don't want to hide in the shadows.  I love this film boldly, wholly, and madly.  I will only contribute to your article if you agree to post my name, address, social security number, and credit card number.  I want the world to know that I love Dracula Untold more than my [wife/husband/child/dog]."  When asked about the possibility of having his identity stolen if I published said information, Brad Pitt (243 San Calina Drive, 209-231-2211, 4392 8333 7261 9398) said, "I'd be happy to let someone steal my identity so they can experience the utter joy of having seen and loved Dracula Untold the way that I have seen and loved it."  He went on to say that his Oscar contender, Fury, and his wife's, Unbroken, were "total shit" comparatively.

It's perhaps surprising that Isaacs, an African-American woman, would choose this year to remove the competition from the Academy Awards, as numerous films from minority filmmakers have buzz.  Angelina Jolie and Ana DuVernay - the latter also an African-American - both have much-antitipated films, and either could become only the second woman to ever win Best Director.  "If those bitches wanted the prize, they should've made Dracula Untold.  Idiots," Isaacs gleefully purrs.

Isaacs is already thinking about the coming year, wondering if she has time to alter the Academy's rules to allow the Unrated Director's Cut of Dracula Untold, which will be released on DVD sometime early next year, to contend next year.  "It would make life so much easier," she admits, "to already have things figured out for the 88th Oscars.  Maybe the Jubilee could go on for a whole year."

The 87th Academy Awards: A Dracula Untold Jubilee, will air on ABC February 22.

(Source: A little bat told me.)