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‘Nickel Boys’ awards campaign update: Ethan Herisse for Best Actor, Brandon Wilson and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor go Supporting

Denton Davidson
2 min read
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Amazon MGM Studios and Orion Pictures have announced “Nickel Boys” star Ethan Herisse will campaign for Best Actor this awards season (reported in an IndieWire exclusive). He will avoid direct competition from his main co-star Brandon Wilson, who drops down to Best Supporting Actor with fellow castmates Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Jimmie Fails, and Craig Tate. Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis Taylor (“King Richard”) will contend in Best Supporting Actress.

Directed by Academy Award nominee RaMell Ross, the film will debut December 13 in New York City and December 20 in Los Angeles. “Nickel Boys” stunned audiences when it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August, quickly earning Oscar buzz when festival director Julie Huntsinger noted, “You almost can’t speak after because it’s cinematically engaging, arresting. It is emotionally rewarding. It should be one of the most talked about films of the whole year.”

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SEE ‘Nickel Boys’ director RaMell Ross and cast on making Black pain ‘communal’ on New York Film Festival opening night

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, “Nickel Boys” chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men, Elwood (Herisse) and Turner (Wilson), navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida. “Most of us don’t know about schools like Dozier, and they are, a lot of them, still around this country where children are being brutalized and suffering violence and suffering isolation,” explained Ellis-Taylor at the film’s New York Film Festival screening.

“Nickel Boys” plans to campaign Ross for Best Director, Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes for Best Adapted Screenplay, director of photography Jomo Fray for Best Cinematography, Nicholas Monsour for Best Film Editing, Brittany Loar for Best Costume Design, production designer Nora Mendis and set decorator Monique Champagne for Best Production Design, makeup department head Ignacia Soto-Aguilar and hair department head Shan Williams for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, production sound mixer Mark LeBlanc and co-supervising sound editors/re-recording mixers Tony Volante and Daniel Timmons for Best Sound, and composers Alex Somers and Scott Alario for Best Original Score.

Barnes produces alongside Academy Award winners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner (“12 Years A Slave,” “Moonlight”) of Plan B Entertainment, and David Levine of Anonymous Content.

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