Between lack of interest, streaming availability and older moviegoers staying home, the Best Picture nominees won’t sell many more tickets
Prior to the pandemic, movie theaters could rely on Oscar-nominated films to drive some amount of box office revenue. That’s not going to happen this year, and with interest in awards shows dropping, that may not be the case going forward.
According to data from Comscore, the seven Best Picture nominees that have reported box office numbers have combined for a North American gross of just $191 million, with 56% of that total coming from the $107 million domestic run of Warner Bros./Legendary’s “Dune.” That’s the lowest total gross for Best Picture nominees on announcement day in the last decade. (In 2014, the nine nominees had grossed just $205 million — though Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” went wide just afterward and went on to gross $346 million.)
The three films that did not report box office totals are Apple’s “CODA,” which was released day-and-date in theaters and on Apple TV+ in August, and Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” and “The Power of the Dog,” both of which had two-week theatrical exclusive runs before hitting streaming.
By comparison, the Best Picture nominees from 2013 to 2020 had racked up hundreds of millions in domestic grosses prior to nomination day, and with the exception of 2019, added at least $100 million after nominations were announced (and in 2014, when American Sniper” became a box office smash, $464 million more).
The amount of money grossed by nominees between announcement day and Oscar Sunday is based on a variety of factors, including how many films are released toward the end of the year and how many move into wide release following their Oscar nomination. But this year, all those factors have no effect because the pillars that have supported the box office for prestige films have collapsed.
In most years, at least one of the Best Picture nominees holds off on a wide release until January, hoping to capitalize on a surge of interest from a victory at the Golden Globes and/or the Oscar nominations, which used to happen very close to each other. Just before the pandemic hit in 2020, Universal ran this strategy to great success with “1917,” which won the top prize at the Golden Globes.
But this year, COVID-19 and scandal have ripped all that away. There is no momentum from last month’s untelevised Golden Globes, as scandals that have engulfed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association reduced this year’s awards ceremony from a boozy spectacle on NBC to a non-televised press conference and a series of derided tweets.
Meanwhile, the surge in COVID-19 cases this winter hit record highs thanks to the Omicron variant, keeping the awards season’s core demographic of older moviegoers in coastal cities at home. While younger moviegoers flocked to theaters to boost Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to $750 million domestically and $1.7 billion worldwide, Twentieth Century’s Best Picture nominee “West Side Story” flopped with just $64 million grossed worldwide against a $100 million production budget.
In an alternate pandemic-free timeline, it’s very possible that “West Side Story,” which was awarded Best Musical or Comedy by the Golden Globes, could have received a Christmas Day limited release and then used its awards buzz to leg out through January and into the run-up to the Oscars. A similar path might have been possible for Warner Bros.’ tennis biopic “King Richard,” as the Will Smith film may have drawn more word-of-mouth from older Black audiences as was the case for “Hidden Figures” in 2017. (“King Richard” was also released on Warner’s streaming service HBO Max the day it hit theaters, further depressing ticket sales.)
But as it stands, most of the Best Picture nominees have either run their course theatrically, like “King Richard,” or are too bleak or too niche (Janus Films’ “Drive My Car” and Searchlight’s “Nightmare Alley”) to draw the attention of the younger moviegoers who have made up an even larger share of the box office in the absence of over-35 audiences.
It’s possible that MGM/United Artists’ “Licorice Pizza,” which gained traction with 18-35 moviegoers in its limited release, could continue to see modest numbers over the next month, and Warner Bros. will bring “Dune” back to theaters for a re-release this Friday. Focus will also expand its Best Picture nominee, “Belfast,” to 920 theaters this weekend.
But the road ahead isn’t optimal for these awards contenders. This weekend is the Super Bowl, which historically has been a slow one for the box office. And while the Omicron surge has largely passed and COVID-19 infection rates are dropping, theaters expect that turnout for older moviegoers won’t return to pre-pandemic levels for months, if ever, and that’s assuming another COVID variant doesn’t start a new wave in the summer or fall.
As for younger adults, there will soon be fresh new blockbusters to squeeze the Oscar hopefuls from screens. On February 18, Sony will release “Uncharted,” hoping that the popularity of “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland will translate to interest in another franchise action film. Then, on March 4, three weeks before the Oscars, Warner Bros.’ “The Batman” is expected to take over both the box office charts and pop culture discourse.
Whether this slow year for the prestige market is merely due to unprecedented circumstances or the sign of a longer decline is unclear. The long-term fate of the Golden Globes is still unknown as the HFPA tries to convince both NBC and Hollywood’s studios and publicists to give it another chance in 2023. If the Globes is finished for good — or even if it just limps on in a diminished fashion — it will force long-term changes in how distributors plan their release strategies for awards hopefuls.
And then, of course, there’s the ongoing question of the Oscars’ future as a cultural force. Viewership for last year’s pandemic-hampered edition in L.A.’s Union Station plummeted over 50%, and given the increasing divide between the popular films that mainstream audiences watch and the more discerning taste of Academy voters, viewers might not be coming back.
That’s not to say that audiences are completely leaving auteurs like Jane Campion and Paul Thomas Anderson behind, but at a time when theaters are becoming even more reliant on blockbusters and audiences are becoming more selective in buying tickets, it’s possible that those who are interested in seeing all the Best Picture nominees will largely do so via streaming. It will take several more awards seasons to find out if that trend is indeed playing out.
