Welcome to ‘The Lead Up,’ A Newsletter Where IndieWire Takes You on The Awards Trail

IndieWire is introducing a new newsletter from Awards Editor Marcus Jones all about cutting through the noise of both Oscar and Emmy season, to discuss what projects stand out — and who will win.

Hello, and welcome to “The Lead Up,” IndieWire’s new newsletter giving you both an overview of the awards race at any given time, and an in-depth look at the specific conversations people on the trail are discussing.

Bless you all for reading this, as I am not huge on doing a lot of promotion on social media. But I do love what I do, which is watch as much cinema and television as possible, and go to as many events celebrating cinema and television as possible, just to share as informed an opinion as possible on what cinema and television will win Oscars and Emmys every year. AKA I sacrifice a little free time to try and help you win your office pool.

So part of this newsletter will be a more formal version of that, a dispatch every other week sharing how any given thing going on in the world, from Chase Infiniti making waves on the Academy Museum gala red carpet one weekend, to the announcement that Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced president of Brazil, is going to prison, actually can have some sway on who and what will be nominated at the Academy Awards. 

This is something we have already been putting into practice, as the first column I wrote all the way back in May was about how, after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year, the Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys would be going to shows shot locally. Shoutout to “The Pitt” and “The Studio” for proving me right.

But surprise! “The Lead Up” is a weekly newsletter, so rather than sell you a false bill of goods about how the frontrunner for Best Actress is changing day-by-day (sometimes those reports are realistic; more often they are not), I am going to use those off weeks to dig deep into what I find to be the most interesting trends, or even just individual people, entering the awards race this year.

For example, we just published my interview with the directors of several major Best International Feature contenders, whose work really illuminates how little Americans know about Middle Eastern and North African countries. If you (or at least I) think of the way women are portrayed in the Abu Dhabi-set “Sex and the City 2” for example, it may come as a surprise how much female filmmakers are setting the standard for cinema in the region, with work done on an epic scale, made on truly independent budgets.

And the first official newsletter about predictions will be the same day the Oscars shortlists are announced, and you all will finally know whether I think “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will get into Best Picture.

IndieWire and I are very aware that I am entering an already extremely crowded space late in the game, but I have been doing the majority of our Emmys and Oscar predictions for some years now, so I promise you that I am not going to waste your time.

Awards season has gotten so long, and so noisy, and all the writing around it is more so to tee up annual video series or magazine covers or events surrounding it (we are not immune, I have probably shaved a couple weeks off my life expectancy helping organize IndieWire Honors.) But “The Lead Up” is all about cutting through the noise, to make you all feel like you are in all these rooms with us, being able to make your own decisions about whether or not an awards campaign is working.

So please join me on this ride by going to our newsletter page and clicking “subscribe” to receive “The Lead Up” every Tuesday, or maybe click “subscribe all” if you are feeling brave, as my colleagues are all doing amazing work centered around Craft, Animation, Reviews, The Future of Filmmaking, etc.

And if you have any feedback, my email is majones@indiewire.com.