Its Official: "The Martian" Is A Comedy Film
The Martian is a comedy?, Entertainment.com
“Yes, once again the Hollywood Foreign Press with Fox’s tacit approval has chosen to give a dramatic film with humorous moments the designation of a comedy. The move puts Ridley Scott’s space adventure, which has now earned $200 million at the box office, in company with other dubious ‘comedy’ choices of the recent past, such as Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, and even the 2005 Keira Knightley-starring Pride and Prejudice. The comedy designation will offer both The Martian (and Joy, most likely) the ability to compete against lighter fare, including the Amy Schumer-starrer Trainwreck or the Melissa McCarthy summer hit Spy. It will also allow the Matt Damon-crowd pleaser to escape the stiffer dramatic competition, which will likely include heavier dramas such as Spotlight, Carol, and Steve Jobs. And for the Globes, it provides better odds that their star-studded affair stays that way, especially if Damon is nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy.”
Keith’s note: Interesting: NASA PAO unknowingly did a promotional tie-in with a space comedy film in pursuit of its own #JourneyToMars promotional campaign. That’s not a first, though: they worked with “Sharknado 3” and “Armageddon” too.
Further evidence that Hollywood is completely nuts.
Not really, its all about the money. Awards translate into more money, but for the film itself as folks wish to see why it won, and to the folks making it who add the awards to their resume.
So it makes sense to place it in a category with less competition if it increases the chances of it winning.
Why not put it in Best Animated Feature then? It has a lot of CGI, so it must qualify…
It is absurd to call “The Martian” a comedy.
With the violence and action, I guess this would be called a drama.
It sure was, one of the reasons Marvin the Martian was honored on the Spirit Rover mission patch 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
I wonder if Mark Watney the Martian will receive a similar honor. 🙂
They probably considered it 🙂
But it just shows how financial incentives impact decision making. Look at all the crazy schemes that emerged with the Ansari X-Prize, and how as a result it set back the development of the commercial market for suborbital launch.