Peter Bart: Awards-Season A-List Goes Missing In A TikTok World
21.01.2022 - 05:11
/ deadline.com
The press agent was in a dour mood. “Once upon a time this was the hot season,” she told me. “The town came to life.”
I understood her nostalgia. A-list parties this year are sparse, and the concept of an A-list itself seems lost in the debris of the metaverse.
As the awards season limps toward conclusion, industry veterans remember the moment when a power Rolodex could create celebrity heat for a contender. But the definition of celebrity also seems cloudy today.
A publicist like Peggy Siegel could deliver a Denzel or a Damon for a screening, thus offering the media some star bait. Now, however, plucking a Charli D’Amelio from the TikTok landscape (she has 133 million followers) or recruiting a Jung Hoyeon from the Squid Game battlefield arguably carries greater clout for a project.
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In the same vein, while the Academy ponders a new Oscar host, its producers might salivate over a 25-year-old Tom Holland even as they eagerly recruited a 75-year-old Bob Hope 50 years ago. And Holland’s friend, Zendaya, may be a better “get” than Whoopi.
I don’t possess the algorithmic ammunition to compare the culture clout of today’s influencers with that of, say, Tom Hanks, but Forbes reports that D’Amelio danced to a payday of $17.5 million on TikTok last year and Dunkin’ Donuts even named a drink after her. Scarlett Johansson may have won her PR shootout with Disney, but Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t seem to notice.
The awards season likely will reflect these phenomena. Squid Game became the first non-English-language series to nail an ensemble cast award from the Screen Actors Guild, its players attracting a glitzier