It was obvious to everyone except the brainiacs at Focus World that the marquee value of David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars would be enhanced if Julianne Moore could attract some Best Actress heat for her manic meltdown performance as an aging movie star. Focus World would not be moved….no! No late-December Oscar-qualifying run (a journalist friend told me that Focus World’s decision was set in stone), no Best Actress campaign. Mainly because they don’t have the money. And yet two days ago Cronenberg declared that shafts of light have broken through, the stone has cracked and Focus World has changed its mind. “They’re going to do a qualifying run — I think it’s in New York and L.A. — so that it will legitimately qualify for the Golden Globes and the Oscars,” he told Vulture‘s Jenna Marotta. “There was a lot of discussion. You know, they really felt that they could do a better job releasing the film in 2015, in January or February. And then, of course, the discussion was, ‘Yeah, but wouldn’t it be great if Julianne got an Oscar nomination, since she won Best Actress at Cannes?’” Moore will benefit from a two-pronged effort, of course — the Maps qualifying run plus a semblance of a Best Actress campaign, Sony Classics-style, on behalf of her Alzheimer’s performance in Still Alice.
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