From what I've heard, the pipeline that got Scorsese in the loop came from one of Kim's NYC friends with connections to Marty; the New York Times, whose critics were notably lukewarm re: NIGHTMARE ALLEY, took a pass on the idea of such advocacy, but the LA staff was more amenable and...voila.
My guess is that the key Oscar nom here isn't Best Picture, but Best Adapted Screenplay. With the film apparently going to streaming by the first of the month (about a week before the noms are announced), the chances of picking up much more than extra cult interest in the theatrical mode are slight. As noted before, the film will make back some of its deficit in the international market, and del Toro will have gotten to deliver his well-practiced lines about the film as a "sociological instrument connecting our times to the Depression"--which is a risible distortion of the book they claim to be following so faithfully, but you've got to try something when you're $50 million in the hole.
The Best Adapted Screenplay would validate this approach and it would shore up the career of Kim Morgan, who has been burning for a way up the ladder in the world of Hollywood ever since she came to town in 2005. An Oscar nomination would keep her in the hunt for other writing projects and take a good bit of the sting out of the film's "trap door" performance at the box office in terms of opening doors at studios in the future.
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