'60 Minutes' Gives 'Lincoln' Big Boost, Snubs 'Zero Dark Thirty'

How '60 Minutes' Could Sway The Oscars

"60 Minutes" is so enamored of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that it's going to air its second segment about the film just before the Oscars, the Hollywood Reporter wrote on Wednesday.

The CBS show already ran a very favorable profile of Spielberg in October, just before the biopic came out. The interview touched on the director's life and the years he spent planning "Lincoln."

But, apparently, "60 Minutes" just can't get enough of the 16th president, so it's bringing back Spielberg, along with Daniel Day-Lewis and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin -- who wrote the book upon which "Lincoln" is loosely based -- for another piece in February, before Oscar voting ends on the 19th. (The Oscars air on February 24th.) The piece will also land right around the time of Lincoln's birthday, giving "60 Minutes" another useful hook.

The coverage is likely to make the makers of "Lincoln" very happy. Most movies get zero bites at such a juicy apple -- let alone two. Oscar voters and "60 Minutes" viewers both skew rather old, so there is a definite possibility of overlap between the groups. It's not hard to picture an Academy member sitting down at 7 PM on a Sunday and looking favorably at, say, Morley Safer joking with Daniel Day Lewis about growing his Lincoln beard.

THR also reported that "60 Minutes" rejected an aggressive pitch by the makers of "Zero Dark Thirty" to cover their film. Choosing a respected but relatively controversy-free movie over one of the most heated intersections of culture and politics in recent memory may seem like a strange choice, but a "60 Minutes" producer told THR that the show was not interested in rehashing debates that have been had elsewhere.

"We'd go out and find our own Jessica Chastain character," he said.

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