You couldn’t find a starker illustration of Hollywood’s changing seasons than what will happen next Wednesday, Aug. 27.
At 7 p.m. Central European Time in Venice, Italy, a screening of Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia” will kick off the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, with the ensuing two weeks bringing three festivals and the premieres of at least a dozen likely contenders for the Academy Awards.
And on the same day back in the U.S.A., final voting for the 2024-2025 Primetime Emmy Awards will come to an end, meaning that for this year’s Emmy season, it’ll be all over but the counting and the envelope-opening.
Wednesday will be the final moment of truth for an array of television programs, including “Adolescence,” “Hacks,” “The Penguin,” “The Pitt,” “Severance” and “The Studio,” and the introduction for just as many movies, among them “Bugonia,” “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “A House of Dynamite,” “Jay Kelly” and “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
And while Oscar season and Emmy season once seemed to be two discrete entities with some breathing room in between, the awards calendar has expanded to the point where the two either overlap or hand off the baton in the blink of an eye, which is what will happen on Wednesday.
So in honor of the handoff, let’s take a look at the two seasons, and where things stand.
The Emmys
In the main program categories at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, there seems to be one sure thing: “Adolescence,” Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s four-part limited series that premiered in March, won raves for the way it explored teen violence and incel culture. Actors Owen Cooper (who was 13 years old when he took the role as his first professional acting gig) and Erin Doherty are favorites in the supporting categories, writer-producer-actor Graham himself seems likely to win a couple of trophies and the show is a prohibitive favorite in the Outstanding Limited Series category, just as its fellow British-hot-button-issue-drama-on-Netflix “Baby Reindeer” was last year.
But the Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series categories offer more intriguing showdowns. In both cases, an Apple TV+ streaming series is facing off against an HBO Max program, and a first-year series against a returning one.
In comedy, both of the favorites are inside looks at showbiz: Apple’s freshman series “The Studio” on one hand, HBO’s fourth-year defending champ “Hacks” on the other. Three comedies have won in their first year over the past decade (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Bear” and “Ted Lasso”), and “The Studio” seems to have an edge – except that “Hacks” was the underdog last year, too, before it upset “The Bear” in the last award of primetime ceremony.
In drama, HBO’s “The Pitt” will try to join “The Handmaid’s Tale” and last year’s “Shōgun” as the only first-year show to win the top award, but the second season of Apple’s “Severance” has earned 27 nominations to only 13 for its chief rival. In a lot of ways, “The Pitt” has real momentum stemming from its January-to-April release and its recent dominance at the TCA Awards, though “Severance” has a formidable statistic in its favor: In this century, no drama or comedy series that received more than 25 nominations has lost in the top category.
The Oscars
If we’re picking winners at the Emmys, we’re at the opposite end of the awards spectrum at the Oscars, where the big question is what movies will be true contenders. Of the films that have already been released, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is the best bet for a Best Picture nomination, though some are holding out hope for “F1” as well.
But the next three weeks will see a potential avalanche of new possibilities. At the Venice Film Festival, which begins on Aug. 27 and runs through Sept. 5, those include three Netflix heavyweights – Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” and Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” – as well as Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” and Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine.”
The Telluride Film Festival begins two days after Venice and won’t announce its lineup until the day before it begins – but between other festivals’ premiere designations and industry talk, it seems that Telluride will probably bring the premieres of Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Edward Berger’s “The Ballad of a Small Player” and Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” among others.
The Toronto International Film Festival will follow on Sept. 4 with screenings of many Venice and Telluride films, along with world premieres of awards hopefuls that will include James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman,” Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” Paul Greengrass’ “The Lost Bus,” and Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” which might be strictly an audience film or might have the ability to attract attention beyond that.
What’s the over/under on Best Picture nominees in that group of 14 films I’ve just mentioned? I’d put it at about 5.5 – which is to say, at least half of the category will be filled with fall festival movies.
In other words, awards season (Emmy edition) is almost done, and awards season (Oscar edition) is just beginning.