John August

Big Fish

Big Fish receives Oscar nomination for Best Score

Big Fish, News, Projects

This morning, Danny Elfman’s score for BIG FISH was nominated for an Academy Award. It’s well-deserved. His score is subtle, never flashy, and really works to support the movie rather than call attention to itself.

While I’m delighted we got this nomination, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed we didn’t get others. Oh well. There are many excellent films and filmmakers recognized in this year’s nominations, and some omissions at least as notable as BIG FISH’s.

I don’t think there’s any great conspiracy for or against anyone. Nominations are just the aggregate of a lot of individual opinions. And on the plus side, I can stop obsessively reading Internet message boards about the awards, which has become a giant time-suck. For that extra hour each day, God bless you, Academy voters.

Big Fish script

Big Fish, News

Newmarket Press will be publishing a paperback version of the BIG FISH screenplay in February. It will be loaded with extras, including photos, production notes, and intros by Daniel Wallace and John.

In the meantime, you can download a .pdf version of the final shooting script here. Print it out on three-hole paper, and you’ll have exactly the same script we shot — and exactly the same the script you could buy for $10 bootlegged in Times Square.

If you read it and feel so inclined, by all means send a comment.

[originally posted December 20, 2003]

Big Fish receives seven BAFTA nominations

Big Fish, News, Projects

logo_bafta_film Yesterday, BIG FISH got seven nominations from BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The BAFTA awards are the closest thing to a British Oscar. Our categories are Film, Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Actor in a Supporting Role (Albert Finney), Production Design, Visual Effects and Make Up & Hair.

I love how each award show calls things by different names. The Brodcast Film Critics always single out the individual (“Best Director”), while the BAFTA’s give out “The David Lean Award for achievement in Direction.”

Tim Burton and Albert Finney already live in London, but the rest of us will be racking up frequent flier miles to go out for the awards in February.

Big Fish opens at #1

Big Fish, News, Projects

According to Sony’s figures — which agree with most of the others I’ve seen reported — BIG FISH came in at number one for the weekend, earning about $14.5 million, compared to RETURN OF THE KING’s $14.1 million.

Since it’s only now Sunday, how can studios say how much they earned for the weekend? Well, all the numbers you hear discussed are actually just estimates. Based on how well Big Fish did on Friday and Saturday, Sony makes an educated guess about how it will do today. New Line does the same for Return of the King, and so on down the list. Are these estimates accurate? Not necessarily, and there’s often grumbling that studios deliberately over-estimate in order to “win” the weekend. In the case of Big Fish and Return of the King, the movies are certainly very close, so a more conservative analyst might wait until the real box office figures come in Monday.

For today, I’ll just say we did very well — better than expected. I think the obsession with opening weekend box office figures is ultimately damaging to the film industry. All the same, for such a difficult, hard-to-peg movie, it’s nice to be #1, if only for a week.