‘zone of interest’ producer says film’s five oscar nominations for jonathan glazer movie are “a real education”

Jim Wilson reeled off the Oscar nominations for _The Zone of Interest_, which he produced with Polish producing partner Ewa Puszczynska, as they were announced, beginning with best

international film, sound, adapted screenplay, director and best picture. “It’s amazing,” he told Deadline. “I’ve never produced a film that’s been in a conversation to this point. It’s been

a real education to co-produce a film that this has happened to,” he added from his base in London on Tuesday. He said that the 2024 Oscar nominations are a testament to the strong

relationships he and Glazer have with Film4, A24, House Productions and Access Entertainment.  RELATED: LILY GLADSTONE ADDRESSES FIRST NATIVE AMERICAN ACTRESS OSCAR NOM: “WHY DID IT HAVE TO

TAKE THIS LONG?” WATCH ON DEADLINE Particularly gratifying, he said, was the nomination for adapted screenplay, which went to the film’s director Jonathan Glazer. “I’m thrilled because so

much went into the writing of that. He’s never written a script on his own before and Martin Amis’ book was a springboard,” Wilson said, while noting there’s very little from the actual book

that ended up in the film . RELATED: CILLIAN MURPHY ON BEST ACTOR ‘OPPENHEIMER’ OSCAR NOMINATION: “I FEEL REALLY PRIVILEGED AND LUCKY TO BE IN A FILM THAT’S CONNECTED WITH PEOPLE” Wilson

cited Amis’ book title _The Zone of Interest_ and a line, taken out of context, that’s spoken by Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, about “how difficult it would be to gas everybody”

seated in a meeting room because of its high ceilings, as the only two examples of material used from the book. Wilson said that it was Glazer who spotted Amis’ tome first. Or rather what

he read first was a capsule review about the book in _The Observer_ newspaper, when it was published in 2014. RELATED: ‘ANATOMY OF A FALL’ & ‘THE ZONE OF INTEREST’ MAKE OSCAR HISTORY AS

ACADEMY REVEALS MOST INTERNATIONAL BEST PICTURE SELECTION EVER “He spotted the thing, he hadn’t read it and it described the plot of the book, part of which was about a concentration camp

from the perspective of a commandant and his wife. There was something about that idea that Jonathan sparked to. We read the book and we did think that there was something there…that it was

partly domestic, the idea of home and work but work from the management floor not the victims to put it bluntly; from the perspective of the people who ran it,” Wilson continued. RELATED:

BRADLEY COOPER REACTS TO SEVEN OSCAR NOMINATIONS FOR ‘MAESTRO’, INCLUDING THREE OF HIS OWN: “IT’S VERY SURREAL” The producer optioned the book in late 2014. “We developed it on our own for

four or five years,” he said.  The Amis book fictionalizes the names of the concentration camp and the name of the commandant. “Fairly soon in that process, we realized that Martin Amis’

primary source must have been Auschwitz and that the book and the people are clearly based on the Höss’s — Rudolf and his wife Hedwig.” RELATED: AMERICA FERRERA TALKS ‘BARBIE’ OSCAR NOM

& DISAPPOINTMENT IN ACADEMY’S SNUB OF GRETA GERWIG, MARGOT ROBBIE: “THEY SET A NEW BAR” A couple of months later, Wilson and Glazer visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former German Nazi

concentration and extermination camp. They also made a point of seeing where Höss and his family lived. “It’s a private home now… and literally on the other side of the garden wall is the

camp. He literally chose to live next door to Auschwitz. And Jonathan said, ‘I want to do Rudolf and Hedwig Höss and their family living a bourgeois life next to Auschwitz.’” RELATED: ‘ZONE

OF INTEREST’ PRODUCER SAYS FILM’S FIVE OSCAR NOMINATIONS FOR JONATHAN GLAZER MOVIE ARE “A REAL EDUCATION” They hired Bartek Rainski as co-producer and for four years he spearheaded a team of

researchers who studied witness testimony from those who had worked at the camp and for the Höss family and other officers. ”A lot of Polish people worked in the houses of SS officers. They

were nannies, gardeners, cleaners. Hedwig would pick from the prisoners who had an expertise in gardening. We set our researchers to look at domestic and private episodes.” RELATED: DIVERSE

OSCAR ACTING NOMINEES EVEN WITH LAST YEAR; ALL ARE FIRST-TIME NOMINEES A lot of material they found set out the day-to-day lives of the Höss family and that ended up in Glazer’s screenplay.

“Sandra Hüller, who plays Hedwig, would be in scenes with Hedwig and her girlfriends and they’re having a gossip about someone wearing a fur coat at the opera… that was all from little

snatches of testimony from Polish workers. It’s almost like a ritualistic gathering of documentary material and conforming it into a feature idea. In essence the dialogue came from that

research,” Wilson said. RELATED: ‘THE COLOR PURPLE’S DANIELLE BROOKS ON EARNING THE FILM’S “BITTERSWEET” SOLO OSCAR NOMINATION & LIFE ON THE ‘MINECRAFT’ SET WITH JENNIFER COOLIDGE Wilson

and Glazer took their project to Film4 which he termed “our spiritual home” because of their past relationship involving Glazer’s film _Under the Skin._ “It was important for us from an

ethical point of view that we work with the people we’ve worked with before — there was always a thing of being loyal to people we’d worked with before,” he said as he mentioned former Film4

boss Tessa Ross “who was our fairy godmother when we worked on _Under the Skin_.” RELATED: ‘PAST LIVES’ HELMER CELINE SONG ON BREAKTHROUGH AT OSCARS WITH FIRST FEATURE & WOMEN

DIRECTORS’ NEW BEST PICTURE RECORD Ross by now was a producer at her House Productions shop and she thought it could be something for Len Blavatnik’s Access Entertainment with whom she had a

business relationship. And Wilson and A24 had always had a good relationship because of _Under the Skin _and Wilson’s own film _Waves_ now and suggested _Zone of Interest_ could work for

them as well. RELATED: COLMAN DOMINGO ON ‘RUSTIN’ OSCAR NOM, PULLING BAYARD RUSTIN “OUT OF THE SHADOWS OF HISTORY” & WHAT IT MEANS FOR LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION “In a way we were working

with all the people and entities we made _Under the Skin_ with, though some of them were in different places,” he said while naming Film4s Ollie Madden and Daniel Battsek. Another huge

supporter later on was Rose Garnett “who was at Film4  at the time we were starting the journey in  2014. Tessa and Rose were there and by the time she left to go and run BBC Film and ended

up at A24, we were in the post and she’s been really helpful,” Wilson said. “I’m thrilled for Jonathan, the whole team, the nominees and my producing partner Ewa Puszczynska. It’s just

remarkable what they all did,” he stated. RELATED: INTERNATIONAL OSCAR-NOMINATED ‘SOCIETY OF THE SNOW’ DIRECTOR J.A. BAYONA CREDITS SOCIAL MEDIA WITH BREAKING DOWN SUBTITLES BARRIER As

pleased as punch as Wilson is, he admitted  to being ”flumaxed a bit it because it just doesn’t feel like the type of film that’s normally recognized by AMPAS” though he felt that perhaps

the film reflected what’s going on in the world “which is the indifference to systemic violence.” RELATED: OSCAR DOCUMENTARY NOMINATIONS SHOCKER: ‘AMERICAN SYMPHONY’ & MICHAEL J. FOX

MOVIE SNUBBED, WHILE INTERNATIONAL FILMS DOMINATE Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers nominated for best sound for_ The Zone of Interest _issued the following reaction statements: RELATED: OSCAR

SCORECARDS: NOMINATIONS BY FILM AND DISTRIBUTOR JOHNNIE BURN: “This is such an extraordinary moment in my life, to be honoured by the Academy. Three years ago Jonathan Glazer said to me we

are going to make a film about the holocaust but we are only ever going to hear the atrocities, and never go inside the camp. To be honest I panicked at the responsibility and thought he was

mad. I am so grateful to Jonathan, Jim Wilson, Ewa Puszczyńska, A24, Film4 and Access for their faith in the sound, and I really couldn’t have done this without Simon Carroll, Brendan

Feeney, and Max Behrens and all at Wave Studios, but mostly I am so very happy that more people will get to see the movie and its powerful message.” TARN WILLERS: “I am thrilled to receive

this nomination! I’m delighted and at the same time humbled that our work has been recognised in such a way. This nomination of course extends to Mateusz Stasiak, Jimi Ogden and Fillip

Sulima, my team whose work and creative ideas made this possible. And thank you to Jonathan Glazer, Jim Wilson, Ewa Puszczyńska, A24, Film4 and Access for their dedication to this important

film.” RELATED: OSCARS: EVERY BEST PICTURE WINNER BACK TO THE BEGINNING IN 1929 RELATED: EVERY BEST ACTOR WINNER BACK TO 1927 RELATED: OSCARS: EVERY BEST ACTRESS WINNER SINCE 1929