This Year’s Oscar Nominees Not Getting Expected Box Office Boost
There’s been plenty of discussion over the past few weeks about the fact that this year’s Academy Award Best Picture nominees are among the lowest grossing nominees we’ve seen in a long time. Most people seem to be jumping to the obvious conclusion that the Oscars are getting further and further out of touch with the general movie-going public by choosing to recognize films that no one is interested in. While this has probably always been true to an extent, I don’t really feel like this year’s nominees are any less accessible than those from previous years. There’s something else going on here, and a recent article in Variety exposes it.
Typically, when a movie is nominated for Best Picture, studios will use the publicity to their advantage by releasing it in more theatres and continuing to promote it, which, in turn, generates more money for these movies. This year, the Best Picture contenders are not experiencing any extra box office action. Why? One possible explanation is the economic recession. Many studios are cutting back costs for marketing and promotion, which means less public awareness for the films. However, a more likely explanation is the increase in major January and February releases, with unexpected hits like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Taken and even Gran Torino stealing dollars away from the Oscar flicks. On the other hand, maybe it is simply the dry nature of this year’s nominees that are keeping audiences at bay. Why do you think these movies aren’t making any money this year? Will we see less art house films in the future if they lose one of the few revenue streams available to them?
Comments (3)
“Most people seem to be jumping to the obvious conclusion that the Oscars are getting further and further out of touch with the general movie-going public by choosing to recognize films that no one is interested in”
Is it that the Academy is out of touch by choosing films no one cares about or is it that this particular time, they’ve chosen films no one cares about that also happen to not be that brilliant? I’ve seen all five Best Picture nominees and none of them are anything I’d ever want to see more than once (and maybe one or two are films I’d like to un-see).
There’s the marketing dollars to consider, sure, but I feel like word of mouth is equally important here and I haven’t encountered a lot of people coming out of any of these films, save Slumdog Millionare, absolutely raving how you MUST SEE those films now. There’s no buzz because most of the nominees are good but not great. There are no controversial choices. People don’t have opinions on these movies the way they have for other films in the past. No one is talking about it and no one cares. (Makes for a rather dour Oscar party!)
I double checked my own list to see where I had ranked these movies for 2008 and while four cracked the Top 20, none cracked the Top 10. Obviously this is entirely subjective, but I had such an incredibly difficult time caring about any of these movies that I haven’t felt any urge to talk them up to friends or family.
Posted by Liz on February 9th, 2009Liz is right.
i.e. where is Rachel Getting Married? Wrestler? Happy-Go-Lucky? Revolutionary Road? Elegy?
Of all the movies that are up for Oscars this year, I doubt I’ll ever watch any of them again.
Posted by Andrew James on February 9th, 2009Maybe people are tired of films that are just designed to be nominated for/win academy awards. The same type of melodramatic shmaltz seems to be nominated for best picture every year. And in the years they do pick good movies, the good movies never seem to win (i.e. brokeback mountain losing to crash, saving private ryan losing to Shakespeare in love, I’m sure there are more examples) I also agree with the sentiments in the posts above that once again this years best pictures aren’t represented enough in the academy’s picks
Posted by Mane on February 10th, 2009Leave a Reply