# Are the Oscars out of touch?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-oscars-out-of-touch/678640>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 13, 2014, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-oscars-out-of-touch/678640 "2014-01-13T05:57:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 17

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**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-oscars-out-of-touch/678640/17 "2014-01-13T15:19:59Z")

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> [@the\_diego](#):
>
> A box office hit was never relevant for an Oscar win/nomination. People knew that decades ago.

I don’t want to get in this argument again, but I will just quote from a post I made a few years ago about this very point.

> [@](#):
>
> … 27% of Best Picture winners (22 films out of 82 awards) were the #1 box office grossing movie of the year upon initial release (caveat: in three of these years (61, 46, 40) the B. Picture winner was overtaken by a Disney film with multiple releases in subsequent years. All my sources combined the release #s for Disney movies.)
> 
> … 77% of BP winners were among their years top-10 grossing films. The first Best Picture winner not to be a top-10 film was 1948’s Hamlet, which ranked 17th in box office. The first BP winner not to be a top-20 film was 1987’s The Last Emperor (#25 for the year).
> 
> … The average yearly box office rank of BP winners is 8.5. For losers it’s 19.27.

However, since I made this it is becoming clear that the correlation between being B. Picture winner and a box office favorite is becoming a little more tenuous. But, given a list of nominees, smart money says to pay attention to the box office figures of the nominees.

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