Since 1980, according to Box Office Mojo, the average B. Picture winner earned 7X the median box office gross of all movies released their respective year - the only film to earn less than the median was “The Hurt Locker”.
Even if you take out the four winners that were the biggest film of the year (Rain Man, Titanic, ROTK, and Forrest Gump), B. Picture winners earned an average of 5X the median grossing movie.
That was exactly my point. This notion that big hits are being shut out by the Oscars doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
For instance, the idea that a $141mil movie (“Slumdog Millionaire”) was not ‘multiplex fare’ seems ridiculous to me.
Btw, I made a typo - nominations expanded to more than 5 in 2009, not 2007.
And, yes, I created a spreadsheet tracking the box office of all B. Picture nominees from 1980-2013. Why do you ask? :o
Well, yeah, but as you asked the question, I took the opportunity to answer it.
I felt that you thought I was saying big movies don’t tend to win :D.
You misunderstand me. The voters are supposed to honor whatever movies and actors they think are the best. It’s not their job to pick movies and actors that will attract viewers. If a voter thinks “Birdman” was the best movie of the year, he should vote for “Birdman,” even if most people never saw it.
But if the result is an awards ceremony that most people don’t care to watch, ABC will eventually stop televising it, and the Oscars will be no more prestigious than the Spirit awards.
very impressive spreadsheet
One of my favorite opening lines: “Hi, I’m Conan O’Brien, and for the next seven hours, I’ll be your host as we explore Oscar magic…”
I’m in The Central time zone. I love The Sound of Music, NPH, and watching the Oscars. I have seen all but one of the best picture nominees and don’t care whether a movie is a blockbuster or your sister made it in the backyard, as long as it’s good.
Having said all that, they are a little too long and they’re definitely too late. I know they want to keep us entertained, but by the time the Gaga number happened I was begging for them to let it end.
We have friends over for the Superbowl every year because it runs from 5 to 9. People can still go home, put the kids to bed, and go to work on time Monday. The Oscars, on the other hand, is 2 hours later, a huge difference if you need to be at the office by 7:30. No way my friends are coming over that night, especially with their kids, and honestly I wouldn’t want them there that late.
Ideally I would want them to cut some of the musical numbers and move it up an hour.
Nope, just a shitty remake of a good foreign film.
I could be way off, but I think the problem has been the decline of “middlebrow” films. Increasingly, you have superhero/comic book action movies for the masses and esoteric movies at the arthouses, with few mainstream movies for grown-ups in between.
Casablanca was solid middlebrow fare. The Godfather was solid middlebrow. So was Forrest Gump. But there are fewer and fewer movies that aim for favor with both critics AND mass audiences.
The Oscar is never going to honor Guardians of the Galaxy. That’s a given. So, if Hollywood isn’t producing quality middlebrow fare, that leaves the arthouse flicks.
I repeat, I DON’T suggest that voters have a duty to consider the effect their selections will have on the Nielsens for the Oscar telecast. IF, hypothetically, the annual baseball awards were given out on a highly-rated TV special, I wouldn’t want the voters thinking, “Hmmm… Mike Trout is young and telegenic, while Miggy Cabrera is pudgy and speaks broken English, so I’m voting for Trout.” The object is to rewards the people you think performed the best.
If the end result is an awards show that fewer and fewer people care to watch, that’s a separate issue entirely.
Viewers will return when popular movies and stars are up for big awards. If that never happens, the ratings will continue to dwindle, and there’s no host who can do much about that.