{"id":402070,"date":"2026-01-11T07:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T07:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/402070\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T07:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T07:07:12","slug":"shakespeare-in-love-reinvented-oscar-campaigning-in-1998-flashback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/402070\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Shakespeare in Love\u2019 Reinvented Oscar Campaigning in 1998: Flashback"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNearly three decades before Hamnet<\/a>\u2018s depiction of William Shakespeare<\/a>\u2018s personal life sparked awards<\/a> buzz, Oscar voters swooned over a film that showed the Bard as having some swagger.<\/p>\n

\n\tShakespeare in Love<\/a> was set up at Universal in the early 1990s; the studio hired Edward Zwick to direct Marc Norman\u2019s script about the playwright\u2019s fictionalized love affair that led him to pen Romeo and Juliet. Zwick enlisted Tom Stoppard<\/a> for a rewrite, and Universal accepted the scribe\u2019s $1 million salary request once Julia Roberts was attached to star as Viola. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film had not yet found its Shakespeare when production began in 1991; Daniel Day-Lewis was Roberts\u2019 top choice but passed. Roberts ultimately exited the project, leading Universal to shut down production despite sunk costs of $6 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Zwick\u2019s success with 1994\u2019s Legends of the Fall, Miramax<\/a> honcho Harvey Weinstein aimed to revive Shakespeare in Love. Weinstein acquired the rights but then hired John Madden to direct, with Zwick retaining a producer credit. <\/p>\n

\n\tKate Winslet was among those considered for Viola before Gwyneth Paltrow<\/a> got the gig. Landing the titular role was Joseph Fiennes, whose older brother, Ralph, had previously read for it. Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck and Judi Dench rounded out the cast. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a delicate path to tread between the humor \u2014 from Shakespearean wordplay to broad slapstick comedy \u2014 and the passionate love story,\u201d the film\u2019s Oscar-nominated editor, David Gamble, tells The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tMiramax released Shakespeare in Love on Dec. 11, 1998, and it collected $289 million ($575 million today), with THR\u2018s review calling it \u201cwonderfully entertaining.\u201d Although the movie\u2019s 13 Oscar noms led the field that year, awards pundits were still shocked<\/a> when it topped Saving Private Ryan for best picture. <\/p>\n

\n\tWeinstein\u2019s aggressive \u201cFor Your Consideration\u201d strategy, which helped the film land seven trophies including Paltrow\u2019s best actress win, incited debate and reinvented awards campaigning. It marked the first time an in-house publicist was hired specifically for the awards push, and producer Donna Gigliotti personally wrote 300 invitations to Academy members to attend the film\u2019s premieres.<\/p>\n

\n\tShakespeare\u2019s life gets examined in a more somber tone with Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s Hamnet, the current Focus Features release that stars Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. As for Shakespeare in Love, Paltrow recently told THR<\/a> that her Oscar win was \u201cvery overwhelming\u201d and added, \u201cWhen I look back, I can\u2019t believe that was me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine,\u00a0click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly three decades before Hamnet\u2018s depiction of William Shakespeare\u2018s personal life sparked awards buzz, Oscar voters swooned over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3042,49,48,75,1542,57355,30445,115302,18744,20623,87013],"class_list":["post-402070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-awards","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-gwyneth-paltrow","tag-hamnet","tag-hollywood-flashback","tag-miramax","tag-oscars","tag-shakespeare-in-love","tag-william-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}