WT's relationship with NBC-Universal reduced to first look

UPDATE, MARCH 2015: Seems apparent that this has severely dented WT's ambitions; they'll now have to be smarter and try to create hits (it seems) with sub-$20m budgets, a long way from the tentpole level of Green Zone: About Time ($15m), Theory of Everything ($12m) - the Oscar bait strategy of the latter (with top class production values) has worked well.

I might later consolidate several past posts on this, but for now: WT has an ongoing production deal with Universal running to 2015 (the arrangement was due to end in 2013). Signed in April 2012, the new deal sees a significant change which gives WT back some of the freedom they lost when initially hooking up with Hollywood majors back in 1992 (Polygram, who sold out to Universal in 1999), but means they're not so sure of getting distribution for WT productions in future:

Universal Pictures has re-upped Working Title Films partners Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner through 2015. This comes after the studio re-upped Imagine Entertainment in January, keeping the studio’s most tenured production companies in the fold. Like Universal chairman Adam Fogelson and co-chairman Donna Langley did with Imagine, Working Title’s deal has been scaled back; instead of exclusive, it is now a first-look deal. The Working Title pact was due to expire next year. Working Title’s films at the studio have grossed $4.25 billion since they began with Universal in 1999, and Bevan and Fellner bring a British sensibility and a supply of prestige to the studio. [emphasis added]

Working Title Warp 2015 Bafta success...Oscar to follow?

...Okay, the Warp 'success' is a little indirect - '71 lead Jack O'Connell (not his only film!) won a public vote for 'Rising Star', but lost out on Oustanding British Film ... won by Theory of Everything (multiple nominations - see this preview report), which WT and the NBC-Universal subsidiaries distributing it will hope may signal Academy success and that potentially lucrative Oscar bounce. Their lead, Eddie Redmayne, has won the Leading Actor Bafta, and it has also scooped up the Best Adapted Screenplay award. See full winners list here.

There are issues with the Baftas positioning themselves as a bellweather for and predictor of Oscars ... aren't these meant to celebrate and promote British success?

Many of Hollywood’s big names will be in attendance; it has become an article of faith that a paparazzi shot in London can be a key opinion-shifter for the all-important campaign to grab Oscar votes before polling finishes on 17 February.
The downside of this is that, over the past decade, critics have claimed that the Baftas have lost some of their cultural distinctiveness, and become a boiled-down version of the Oscars, with the same films and actors being nominated. This year, if awards go they way they are expected to, we are likely to have exactly the same winners in both.
“I think it’s a reflection of the ‘special relationship’,” says Leslie Felperin, film critic for the Hollywood Reporter. “There’s an inevitable overlap in zeitgeist that extends to politics and culture as well as film. It’s more than it ought to be, for sure. If you look at the Césars in France, for example, they are much more proudly French, and they fly the flag for their domestic industry in a more assertive way.” (Guardian report)

Theory got 10 Bafta nominations in total.