Surely, on some level, all movies are “Oscar bait.” Why make a movie at all if you’re not gunning for the only award more prestigious than a Golden Globe? The art of it? Nonsense. Even Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer must sit atop their tower of slightly outdated pop-culture references and dream of someday wrapping their fingers around that tiny, golden man.
Some shots at an Academy Award, however, are actually pretty easy to see coming. Like, for example, when The Weinstein Company and See-Saw Films—the people behind 2010’s The King’s Speech, which won four Oscars—get back together to make a movie about a lost boy who tries to find his family. As reported by The Wrap, the Oscar-winning team is adapting Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home, the true story of how he got lost as a 5-year-old boy in India, was adopted by an Australian family, then used the magic of the Internet to find his real family 25 years later. The film version, retitled The Lion, will be directed by Garth Davis. Presumably Colin Firth is already crossing his fingers that he’ll get the call to play the 5-year-old Indian boy, which would certainly generate some buzz at award season.