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Clayton Davis
Chief Awards Editor
byClaytonDavis See All
©Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection There is a quiet truth about the Emmy race for outstanding television movie, and it runs directly counter to everything the Oscars have trained pundits to expect. At the Academy Awards, the safest path to a best picture nomination is the prestige drama. At the Emmys, the movie category can be where comedies and other genres thrive.
Part of this is simply supply. The serious, awards-minded films that once might have premiered as stand-alone TV movies now almost always arrive as a limited series, where the runway is longer, and the campaign budgets are bigger. What remains in the movie field skews toward the streaming crowd-pleaser, and television voters, perhaps freed from the cinephile guilt that haunts Oscar season, tend to recognize (and reward) the pics that are flat-out fun to watch. Look at some of the past winners in this category, which include the live-action animated-hybrid “Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” the musical biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” the comedy “Quiz Lady” and last year’s action-thriller victor “Rebel Ridge.”
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