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Those issues come up publicly and explicitly for the first time in Range’s motion to dismiss the CAA lawsuit, filed tonight by Range litigator Orin Snyder and a team at Gibson Dunn. According to the filing, “this unlawful cancellation of equity sent a chilling message to both current and former employees: contractual agreements and legal protections at CAA were secondary to the whims and greed of its leadership.” (A CAA rep declined to comment.) If you remember, CAA sued Range in October claiming the company, launched in 2020, is an “unlicensed talent agency built on deceit,” that the defectors stole proprietary data, and that Range “engages in lucrative transactions foreclosed to law-abiding talent agencies.” The suit has exposed the often murky distinction between agents and managers, and came as CAA was also battling the Range partners individually in arbitration over whether they had forfeited their equity by violating a non-competition agreement. That arbitration is set for March. In the new motion to dismiss, Range attempts to shoot down CAA’s claims, asking why the agency waited four years to file suit, noting that CAA still shares a number of clients with Range, and arguing that non-competes are illegal in California and “also clearly do not apply because the employees had left the agency business entirely and were now working as managers, a distinct role.” Range also calls out Lourd and the CAA leaders, who are acting “emotionally, punitively, and vindictively.” So… like agents, I guess. But Range also argues that CAA has worked over the past decade to reduce competition in the representation business, via both its allegedly predatory TV packaging business, which was eventually outlawed by the Writers Guild, and its 2023 purchase of ICM Partners, among other, smaller agencies. That ICM deal, valued at $750 million, was scrutinized over antitrust concerns before being approved. CAA later sold a majority stake to luxury mogul François-Henri Pinault in a deal that valued the agency at $7 billion. “For an agency that professes to support talent, it’s ironic that CAA is now attempting to reduce choice in the industry,” Snyder told me tonight. “At the same time, CAA is sending a clear message to all of its agents that their hard-earned vested equity could be taken away forever at the whim of the agency.”

In the old days, Oscar season used to feature one or two mainstream films that would score a handful of nominations, expand into wide release, and do big numbers. American Hustle, The Revenant, and Hidden Figures, for instance, all ultimately landed in $155 million to $185 million territory. This past weekend, however, just days after the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced, the box office was objectively meh, totaling just $66 million in domestic revenue. Part of the explanation is that this year’s holiday holdovers aren’t as big as a Star Wars or an Avatar, but there’s also a conspicuous absence of an Oscar contender with broad appeal. The earnings from those mainstream winners are the difference between pre- and post-Covid box office, when big movies—ones that didn’t need awards attention to succeed—pulled down a handful of nominations to push them over the top and boost total gross during the first months of the year. Indeed, this weekend’s box office is down 46 percent from the same period in 2020, which was also the last time one of those bigger movies got an awards season boost: Sam Mendes’ World War I thriller 1917 raced to $159 million in North America and $384 million worldwide on a $95 million budget. That year’s eventual best picture winner, Parasite, earned $53 million in North America, a near-record domestic amount for a non-English-language feature, and $262 million worldwide. Just one year earlier, best picture winner Green Book earned more than $320 million worldwide, including $71 million in China. The closest thing we’ve had to a mainstream Oscar season breakout hit since the beginning of the Covid pandemic was Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, which earned $111 million worldwide in late 2023 and early 2024 and won Emma Stone her second Oscar for best actress. This season, judging by the first post-noms weekend, the only two Oscar bump beneficiaries are Searchlight’s A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, and A24’s epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody. A Complete Unknown lost 490 theaters after playing in 2,500 over the M.L.K. weekend, but box office fell just 17 percent, for a $3.1 million fifth weekend and $63 million domestic so far. Meanwhile, The Brutalist added 780 theaters for a total of 1,118, and earned $2.8 million (+46 percent week over week), bringing its domestic total to $9.33 million. More modest Oscar nomination bumps included Paramount’s September 5, which was snubbed for best picture but earned $770,000 (+120 percent) in 394 theaters, while surprise best picture nominee I’m Still Here earned $240,000 (+117 percent) in 17 theaters. A Real Pain added $76,000 (+27 percent) in 180 theaters, but it’s already available on V.O.D. and Hulu, diluting the nomination benefits. If studios are releasing a potential mainstream contender like Conclave or last season’s The Holdovers partially to capitalize on potential Oscar recognition, having those films on the same short theatrical-to-V.O.D. pipeline can be self-defeating.

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The decline in awards season box office is partially about shifting audiences habits, and what’s now considered theater-worthy—whether audiences will leave the house even to see a Steven Spielberg–directed musical or a Will Smith–starring sports biopic that they’ll be able to watch at home in a month or two. In fact, any number of the previous decade’s Oscar season breakouts—Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, Silver Linings Playbook, or La La Land—would probably struggle theatrically today. The notion of mainstream Oscar contenders like A Beautiful Mind, Black Swan, or The Shape of Water platforming as early as October or as late as December and then expanding to blockbuster-sized business in January also may be a relic of the recent past. But there’s still something to be said for releasing films late in the year and chasing awards season glory. Say what you will about the Oscars, but Hollywood’s big night is one of the last reasons so-called major studios still bother putting adult-skewing, prestige-chasing mid-budget movies in theaters.