Kidman and Watts Oscar hopes bleak SO much for the Oscar battle between the Aussie A-List princesses. It had all of the makings of a stellar Academy Awards contest: Naomi Watts' portrayal of Princess Diana going head-to-head for the best actress Oscar with Nicole Kidman's Princess Grace. It won't happen. What did happen? After plenty of hype, people saw the films. Earlier this month Watts' biopic, Diana, was torpedoed by terrible reviews while Kidman's Grace of Monaco's Oscar perfect November 17 release date in the US just suffered an unglamorous boot by its Oscar hungry studio boss Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein has pushed Grace of Monaco's US release to mid-2014, making it ineligible for the March 2 Academy Awards ceremony. There is no other man in Tinseltown who loves the pursuit of an Oscar more than Weinstein and by delaying the Kidman film he is putting his marketing might behind two other films in his stable, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Lee Daniel's The Butler. Kidman's other early Oscar hope, The Railway Man, was purchased by Weinstein after its world premiere at this month's Toronto Film Festival, but it will also be released in 2014, robbing Kidman of another chance to grab an Oscar nomination this season. Watts' much-hyped Princess Diana portrayal was so savaged by critics it derailed any hope of an Oscar campaign. "While mostly swerving past the pitfall of tastelessness, this sincerely intended account of the last two years of Princess Diana's life risks an even more perilous roadblock: dullness," Variety critic Charles Grant wrote.