There has been a lot of Oscar talk about Andy Serkis’s performance in Rise of the Planet of the Apes from day one, but once the audience saw his performance, they were definitely sold.
Of course, this raises a lot of issues that are confounding in Hollywood. Can a star doing motion capture indeed be nominated for Best Actor?
So now with a $453 million world-wide box office take, reports are coming in that yes, Fox will go for the Oscars. There is also (surprise!), a sequel in the works.
As reported on TheWrap, the two key creatives, Serkis and director Rupert Wyatt are both coming back, along with screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.
Back in the summer, the screenwriting duo said they knew what they wanted to do for a sequel right as Rise was coming out, and also have ideas for another movie after that.
In the meantime, Deadline confirmed there will be an Oscar campaign for Apes, and it should be very interesting to see where all this leads. The publications points out that the first actor Fox locked down for the sequel was indeed Serkis, and it would absolutely be all new territory in filmmaking if an actor doing motion capture would be up for Best Actor.
In reviewing Apes, Roger Ebert called Serkis the best actor in the film, while the New York Daily News hailed him “the CGI Meryl Streep.”
Of course, what’s always most important to remember is a tool is only as good as whoever’s using it, and as Serkis told NPR, “I never considered (performance capture) anything else but live action acting. With performance capture, if you don’t get the performance on the day, you can’t enhance the performance. I think there is a woeful lack of understanding from the acting community. The tool is nothing more than another way of recording an actor’s performance.”
