Media 8 Entertainment announced that its film "Monster" and star Charlize Theron won two more major awards over the weekend. At Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, Charlize Theron won the prize for Best Actress, a category she also won at Saturday's Satellite Awards. The SAG Awards are voted on and awarded by the approximately 1,300 members of the Screen Actors Guild, while the Satellite Awards are handed out by the International Press Academy, an international organization of film journalists. These latest two awards add to the already very impressive list of prizes Ms. Theron has won for her work in “Monster,” which includes most recently the prestigious Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama.
Actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization which votes on the Oscars, and so the SAG awards often are a precursor to potential Oscar winners. Accordingly, Ms. Theron's SAG win further solidified her position as a front-runner for an Academy Award, the U.S. film industry's top honor, which will be given out at the internationally televised gala ceremony this Sunday, Feb. 29. Additionally, Oscar organizers announced over the weekend that Ms. Theron joined the list of stars who will present this year's Academy Awards, which should provide further media visibility for “Monster” during the broadcast.
At the box office, “Monster” had yet another strong weekend. According to Daily Variety, the film grossed an estimated CDN $3.3 million (US$2.5 million) at just over 1000 theaters. That brought “Monster's” cumulative gross to CDN $31.7 million (US$23.8 million) through nine weeks in release. US distributor Newmarket Films plans to add 50-60 more engagements this Friday, and expects audience interest in the film to remain strong. According to Daily Variety, Newmarket also expects that should Ms. Theron win the Oscar, that success could provide even further bounce at the box office for the film. “ |
