Molly's Game Gets Oscar Nomination

Aaron Sorkin’s crime drama about the life of Molly Bloom, the woman convicted of organizing underground high stakes poker games has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.

Molly’s Game hit theaters on Christmas Day, December 25th last year and was received with critical acclaim from the get-go. On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes the movie holds an impressive 81% favorable rating based on 205 professional reviews. Audience responses to the movie have also been generally positive.

Despite all that, Molly’s Game failed to bring in the big bucks in the box office, grossing $41.1 million as of now. Although that number is higher than the movie’s estimated $30 million budget please note that a big chunk of the revenue - as a rule of thumb, it’s usually calculated as 50% - goes to the movie theaters; also, the marketing costs are not included in the production budget so overall the film most likely will be a net loss for STX Entertainment.

However, Molly’s Game is still very popular with movie experts: it is among the five movies nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 90th Academy Awards.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin worked Molly Bloom’s 2014 autobiography into an excellent movie script. Sorkin also took on the directorial duties of the film, a first-time experience for him, but as a screenwriter, he has a rich career behind him already. In fact, he has already won an Oscar in the category he’s nominated again this year - he took home the Best Adapted Screenplay award for the 2014 movie The Social Network.

Molly’s Game got a lot of the attention from the online poker press ever since it’s production was announced - this is the first big-budget Hollywood movie starring A-list talent about the game of poker since the 1998 release of Rounders.

Sorkin sought out the help of American poker pro David Paredes while working on the potentially Oscar-winning script, so the poker technicalities and jargon are on point in the movie - no wonder it’s embraced by the online poker community.

The 90th Academy Awards will be held on March 4th. By then we will know if Molly’s Game will succeed in taking home the title - it’s up against four other movies, Call Me by Your Name, Logan, Mudbound and The Disaster Artist.