Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake is my final Case Of post for the ten Best Picture nominees at the upcoming Oscars. If you missed the nine previous entries, they’re here:
The Case for West Side Story:
It would be a pretty cool storyline for Spielberg’s remake to win Best Picture 60 years after the 1961 version was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 10 (including BP). The 2021 retelling didn’t match the original with seven nods, but that’s still a decent haul.
The Case Against West Side Story:
Those seven nominations didn’t include some significant ones to nab a BP win – namely Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. The last BP recipient that missed a writing mention was 1997’s Titanic. The box office for this Story was very disappointing – earning $37 million domestically versus its reported $100 million budget.
The Verdict:
West Side Story is likely to repeat six decades later in one category with Ariana DeBose in Supporting Actress for the same role that Rita Moreno got a statue for. A BP repeat is far more unlikely.
While this concludes my Case Of posts for the BP contenders, we are far from done. I’ll now begin my write-ups for the hopefuls in Director and the four acting races (alternating alphabetically between them). That will start with Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction of Licorice Pizza…
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