On the other hand, at least it was broadly popular. In 1982 (I think), three of the Best Picture contenders were Gandhi, Tootsie and E.T. Gandhi won, of course, and while it was a great epic, it was probably seen by fewer people than the other two. And certainly the other two are much more re-watchable. Similarly, Roma might be the prestige epic, but is it that watchable multiple times? Is it that broadly popular? Plus I’m not a member of the Academy but I am biased against movies that didn’t get widely released.
It used to be, until as recently as 2004, that for a film to win Best Picture it had to be a crowd pleaser with a fairly large audience. Even in your example, Gandhi was the 12th-biggest movie of the year.
From 1980-2004:
The #1 film (by box office) of the year won 4 times (ROTK, Titanic, Forrest Gump, Rain Man)
A top-5 film won 10 times
A top-10 film won 14 times
None of the above has happened since. The only correlation which has held true throughout Oscar history between B. Picture and box office grosses is that the lowest-earning film never wins Best Picture, going back to Wings (1927, also the #1 box office movie of the year).
(And, yeah, I got a spreadsheet with this data. Don’t have the latest one uploaded, but here’s the one y’all can access.)
With the Oscar Awards only about two weeks away, I’ve finally seen all of the nominees I’m going to (I haven’t seen anything in the Documentary categories and have missed Never Look Away and Capernaum in best Foreign Feature. Otherwise, I’ve seen everything nominated), so I thought I’d throw out my thoughts on the winners (at least the major awards). I’ve decided to put three categories into each award: Will Win (my best guess as to how the academy will vote); Should Win (my choice); MIA (only if my choice from all the movies I’ve seen this year isn’t among the nominees)
Best Picture
Will Win: A Star is Born (by process of elimination)
Should Win: Roma (I think noms in both Best Picture and Foreign Film will reduce the vote for Roma in Best Picture)
MIA: *Leave No Trace
*
Best Director
Will Win/ Should Win: Alfonso Cuarón – Roma (a very personal masterpiece directed by an acknowledged master)
MIA: Deborah Granik – Leave No Trace
Best Actor
Will Win: Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born (though I think Malek could sneak in)
Should Win: Willem Dafoe – At Eternities Gate
MIA: Ethan Hawke – First Reformed (Anyone else notice that all the nominations in this category are actors playing “known” characters, either biographical or just well-known from other versions? Hawke created a character who’s arc I could not predict.)
Best Actress
Will Win/Should Win: Glenn Close – The Wife (Why not? It’s her time. But this is a category where I would not be outraged by any of the nominees winning)
MIA: Yup (I think the nominees represent some of the best performances of the year, but there were at least another half dozen that could have been added. Like Emily Blunt, Thomasin McKenzie, Elsie Fisher, Joanna Kulig, Regina Hall, Charlize Theron…the list goes on. I wish they could expand this one to 10+ nominees.)
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win/ Should Win: Richard E. Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me? (It’s a tough category- no massive stars on the back end of a career getting a lifetime achievement award, no flashy scenes, no death scenes. I took a guess at Grant over Elliott or Rockwell)
MIA: Ben Foster – Leave No Trace
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win/Should Win: Amy Adams – Vice (a lot of good performances, but Adams is due)
Best Original Screenplay
Will Win: Roma
Should Win: First Reformed
MIA: Eighth Grade (How does this get left out and well written but by the book screenplays like Green Book and Vice make the cut?)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: A Star is Born
Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk
MIA: A Simple Favor (just a gem of black comedy)
Best Animated Feature Film
Will Win: Incredibles 2 (Isle of Dogs was to early in the year, Spiderman too late and pitched at the wrong demographic for an award)
Should Win: Isle of Dogs
Best Foreign Language Film
Will Win/Should Win: Roma (I think this win crushes Roma’s chances at Best Picture. I would much rather see Roma win Best Picture and Shoplifters win this one, though a Cold War win wouldn’t make me sad)
Best Animated Short Film
Will Win/Should Win: Bao (Like many, I would love to see Pixar knocked off, but frankly, it’s the best in this group)
Best Live Action Short Film
Will Win/Should Win: Marguerite
And, while I haven’t seen any of the nominees in the Documentary Categories, I’m guessing:
Best Documentary - Feature
Will Win: RBG (Though the documentary awards can get really squirrely, a film can be too popular to win)
Best Documentary – Short Subject
Will Win: A Night at the Garden (With the Academy, you can’t go wrong betting on Nazis (the real ones))
Though The Hurt Locker was a very close call, just a few million. It could reasonably happen.
4 awards given out during commercials
since they can’t even find a host they might as well just announce the winners on a website rather than wasting 3 hours It’s like a FB game , takes 3 hours but with an actual 10 minutes anyone cares about
“Moonlight” just barely missed this honor, slightly outdrawing “Hell or High Water” by less than a million bucks.
Or do what the Grammys does, and give them out during the pre-show / red carpet arrivals; record them, and air them going into/coming out of commercial breaks. I remember one year when someone was being interviewed on the carpet when someone else informed him that he had just won a Grammy.
But that’s what I like about the Oscars; they show all of the awards being given out. There are no “who cares” awards, like the Emmys have.
Well, they do keep the nerds out. (The Scientific and Technical awards were already given out.)
This is such an idiotic & pointless decision and is a slap in the face of the people who *actually *make movies. Just how in the world is this supposed to be a good idea and for what benefit? There is no one in the viewing audience who was thinking “Well, I wasn’t going to watch the Oscars but now that they aren’t showing the awards for Cinematography & Editing I’ll tune in!” And you piss off all of the loyal viewers who **do **watch.
What needs to happen now is the big stars they are counting on drawing an audience should come out against this. I’d bet if someone like Lady Gaga said “Show all of the awards or I won’t perform,” they’d backtrack on this in a heartbeat. She already got them to allow all 5 song nominees to perform, when they originally had just cut it to two.
I was going to refer to this… I think Moonlighting may have actually accomplished this, but I would have to see where the BO was for all nominees right before it one.
Hell or High Water was shockingly little-watched, given that it’s a crime movie with stars in it.
They don’t have categories and nominees, though.
Hmmm, according to Guillermo del Toro, they are **not **actually cutting the awards from the telecast, just editing the walk-up to the stage. Which if true, why is it even being talked about to the press? If it’s something no one would even have noticed anyway and would only cut seconds from the broadcast??
Why not section off a small area up front for nominees? Not ALL of the noms in every category, but for the NEXT category. So if it’s Adapted Screenplay, some poor schmo writer isn’t wayyyy back but s/he’s up front with all the rest (and a guest) for their awards and then they’re swapped out with Original Screenplay, etc?
To conserve time, don’t make two people who are supposed to be ACTORS get up on the stage and give line reading that fall like lead balloons, saying terrible joke after terrible joke. There’s a lot of fat to be trimmed. If next year they do cut these ones out entirely, that would suck.
Actually, while JohnT is technically correct, from an awards perspective he’s wrong. “Moonlight” stayed in the theater long past the Oscar date of February 26, picking up another $3.5 million. On the night of the ceremony, it was indeed the lowest drawing film.
Thank you for providing a citation to my caveat in post 50. 
:o oops…missed that one. 
In international box office it’s WAY ahead of “Hell or High Water” - are we going by international or USA/Canada?
As to the phenomenon… I thought “Moonlight” was the best movie I have seen in the last ten years, and “Hell or High Water” was just outstanding, a wonderful movie. If the idea of the Oscars is to nominate and reward the best movies, that year they nailed it. “Moonlight” was the deserving winner, and “Hell or High Water” deserved to be nominated.
But that is not, in fact, the purpose of the Oscars. The purpose of the Oscars is to serve as an advertising vehicle for the movie industry, and in that regard it is clearly not working as well as it used to, and that may be in part because low-visibility movies are winning most of the awards. We could spend a whole thread on why that is and how the big draw movies are all franchise properties and blah blah blah but the truth is ratings are down and Hell or High Water made less money than “Marvel Movie 46” will make its first loud weekend. The decisions the Academy has made around a Best Popular Movie award and not televising some awards are attempts to reverse that, and say what you will but they know what their job is and they’re trying to do it better.
I’m overall disappointed in the nominations, especially for BP. I liked some of them but I can’t name one (except Roma that would deserve to win in any other year. (Which reminds me, is there a thread for The Favourite? Because I hated that one, and seem to be the only one. I want to know what I missed that made it so great.)
Honestly, I’m just supremely pissed by the snub for Eighth Grade. I thought that was the best movie I saw all year, and the best lead actress performance, and one of the best supporting actor performances, and it got completely ignored. Not even a Screenplay nod! I’m going to watch the whole ceremony with my arms crossed in defiance because of that injustice.
If I’m reading that chart right, Moonlight was at about $22 million before winning the BP Oscar. I think Roma’s gross is much less than that. The Boxofficemojo page is missing detail, but it seems to be at only $3.5 million.