At Cannes, Harvey Weinstein vowed Jake Gyllenhaal would get an Oscar nomination for his role as the boxer Billy Hope in the upcoming film Southpaw making up for his not getting a nomination for last year’s Nightcrawler. “We’ll get revenge,” he told Cannes journalists. “This transformation in Southpaw is amazing… this film is so strong and credible. We believe Jake is a boxer first.”
I mention this now because, in terms of my Best Actor predictions for the 2016 Oscars, I was working under the theory Gyllenhaal’s work in Southpaw would most likely end up playing second fiddle to his work in Jean-Marc Vallée‘s Demolition, simply because Southpaw is hitting theaters in July and Demolition would have most likely played the festival circuit. After all, it was easy enough to suppose Demolition would arrive this year considering the film is in the can and already has its MPAA rating, but it would appear Fox Searchlight has other plans, dating the feature for an April 8, 2016 release. At this point perhaps a Berlin premiere is in order, though you never know, it may still appear in Toronto.
The film, which is based on the 2007 Black List script by Bryan Sipe, follows a young investment banker (Gyllenhaal) struggling to understand his emotional disconnect following the tragic death of his wife in an auto accident. As he tears apart his life in a distraught effort to see where he went wrong, he becomes obsessed with destruction and develops a unique relationship with a single mother (Naomi Watts) who rescues him. Chris Cooper, Heather Lind and Judah Lewis co-star.
So with this news Gyllenhaal’s buzzed about work in Southpaw gets a boost. I’m not sure if his performance in Everest is anything that could compete, but I’m expecting that one to be more of an ensemble survival story rather than a piece for individual actors to truly standout. We’ll see.
All that said, I have updated my Best Actor predictions and Best Picture predictions based on the news.
