Racing to the Screening Room to Outpace Oscar Rivals

LOS ANGELES - For those who have wondered how Hollywood's studios will get their latest-released movies seen by thousands of awards voters before the unusually early onset of Oscar voting on Dec. 17, Universal Pictures has an answer: blitzkrieg.

On Friday, Universal's publicity team circulated word of a lightning strike by its “Les Misérables,” which opens in commercial theaters on Christmas Day, with a series of six Los Angeles-area screenings in about eight hours on Nov. 24. The film's director, Tom Hooper, will attend all of them - and this, after he executes a similar maneuver in New York on Nov. 23, where the screenings cluster in more manageable Manhattan.

In theory, it can be done. But based on close inspection of his Los Angeles stops, it appears that Mr. Hooper will cover more than 45 miles on busy surface streets and freeways, just as Christmas shoppers hit the roads.

According to Universal's plan, Mr. Hooper, who won an Oscar in 2011 for d irecting “The King's Speech,” will start the workday at noon by introducing his new movie at a theater in Hollywood.

An hour later, he should be at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in the San Fernando Valley, some five miles away (with a driving time of nine minutes, by an optimistic estimate on Yahoo Maps), to introduce the film again.

Then it's off to Santa Monica - 18 miles, and 24 minutes, away, as the limo flies - for a question-and-answer session where “Les Misérables,” which has a running time of well over two hours, will have begun screening at noon.

There's another showing, with an introduction by Mr. Hooper, in Santa Monica at 4 p.m. That should leave time for an 18-mile drive back to the valley, to introduce a 7 p.m. screening at the television academy.

Then, Mr. Hooper can backtrack to Hollywood, five more miles, in time for another Q. and A., at a screening that will have started at 5 p.m., and should be wrapped by abo ut 7:30.

It should work out fine. Unless, of course, Mr. Hooper collides along the way with filmmakers behind the Weinstein Company's “Django Unchained,” Sony Pictures' “Zero Dark Thirty” or Warner Brothers' “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”

All have release dates in mid-to-late December, and will soon be fighting for attention as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, begins a nominating vote that in the past did not start until much closer to the month's end.