The upcoming movie awards season has its first official entry.
Selection has discovered solely that Paris Barclay’s documentary “Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It” is the primary movie uploaded to the Academy Screening Room. On the members-only platform, Oscar voters can stream films for awards consideration for the 99th Academy Awards.
The add serves because the unofficial beginning gun for a race that can unfold over the subsequent eight-plus months. A brand new wave of titles is predicted to reach within the coming weeks, with movies added each Friday by way of the tip of the season throughout all classes, together with finest image, specialty races, documentary function, animated function, worldwide function and brief movie classes.
That is the earliest date that the Academy has made the primary screener obtainable to its roughly 11,000 members. Sometimes, the preliminary slate of movies is uploaded in August. The primary wave of movies will give business voters a head begin on watching films for consideration for the upcoming Academy Awards.
Distributed by Abramorama, the movie at present holds a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It was launched in choose theaters Feb. 20, starting with a run at New York Metropolis’s Movie Discussion board, after premiering at SXSW in Austin, Texas, in 2024. Reviewing the film for Variety following its SXSW debut, chief movie critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that “as the documentary reveals, Billy Preston was an elusive figure — ebullient and all there, and also hidden and mysterious.”
Additionally including: “Just when you think you’re watching an upbeat pop doc, the dark side of Billy Preston’s life comes crashing in. And is it ever dark.”
The movie, which overcame a authorized problem on the eve of its SXSW premiere, chronicles the lifetime of the legendary keyboardist and Grammy winner, who carried out alongside The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Little Richard and plenty of others.
Directed by Barclay, who co-writes with Cheo Hodari Coker, the documentary options interviews with Billy Porter, Ringo Starr, Merry Clayton and Preston’s longtime buddy Eric Clapton, alongside an authentic rating by Robert Glasper. Producers embrace Stephanie Allain, Coker, Jeanne Elfant Festa and Nigel Sinclair.
Preston loved a profitable solo profession, scoring No. 1 hits with “Outa-Space,” “Will It Go Round in Circles,” “Nothing From Nothing” and “You Are So Beautiful.” His breakthrough single, “That’s the Way God Planned It,” was recorded in 1969 for The Beatles’ Apple Data and produced by his buddy George Harrison. Preston died in 2006 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2021.
The documentary marks Barclay’s first feature-length movie and is by one in all tv’s most acclaimed and achieved administrators. Throughout a profession spanning practically 200 episodes on TV, he has helmed collection similar to “NYPD Blue,” “ER,” “The West Wing,” “Lost,” “The Good Wife,” “CSI,” “Sons of Anarchy,” “House,” “Glee” and extra.
Barclay received two Emmy Awards for steering “NYPD Blue” and has earned eight extra Emmy nominations for producing and directing, together with three for “Glee,” one for “The West Wing” and one for “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” He stays one of many few administrators in Emmy historical past to obtain directing nominations in all three tv codecs: drama, comedy and restricted collection.
The upcoming Oscar season brings plenty of anticipated titles from auteur filmmakers similar to Christopher Nolan (“The Odyssey”), Denis Villeneuve (“Dune: Part Three”), Martin McDonagh (“Wild Horse Nine”) and extra. The Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday that it will present Honorary Oscars to veteran actress Glenn Shut, legendary director Ridley Scott and Disney’s first Black animator Floyd Norman, whereas producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, longtime champions of impartial movie, will obtain the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
The penultimate Academy Awards for Disney platforms will likely be hosted by Conan O’Brien and can air dwell on ABC and Hulu from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 14, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
