John Ottman

NO CAMPAIGN

Thankfully, in the end, the film spoke for itself. But the some damage was done: Because it was feared that footage from the film could be subverted on the Internet, the studio felt it would be wise not to release DVDs to academy members before its release. A DVD might get out and a scene could get re-cut and manipulated in God-knows what kind of way and become a YouTube sensation - adding fuel to the fire and possibly affecting the film's performance. So it was the only choice, as painful as that was for everyone, not to send out DVDs before its release. This kept the film from being seen by any academy voters for possible nominations. Therefore it made no sense to do an academy campaign for a film that no academy member could see. Although Valkyrie ended up being exonerated at the box office and averted the knife-sharpening predictions and desires for it to fail, the internet frenzy ended any nominations for the film being possible. Considering the arduous year and half of everyone pulling out the stops in their fields, this was a maddening disappointment.