..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Money Talks

Dollar signs can mean a variety of things to a given film's Oscar chances, but how much attention are voters actually paying to the numbers? Does a film's box office success make it a stronger candidate in their view? Does coming up short or under expectations make it a lame horse?

The average box office of last year's nominees by the time the nominations were announced was just under $50 million, with four of the five contenders grossing less than $60 million. In fact, nearly half of the Best Picture nominees from the last five years (12 out of 25) had grossed less than $65 million at the moment they were nominated.

So since when is $61 million not enough for Oscar?

Cinderella Man was seen as a disappointment when totals rang in to the tune of $61 million on an $88 million production budget, plus advertising overages that surely took its total cost of release to over $125 million. Thusly, the film is down for the count in the eyes of the majority.

On the other hand, Crash became a sleeper success over the summer, bringing in $53 million on a production budget of less than $7 million. That's enough for it to be considered a dark horse to many a prognosticator.

And how does Oscar deal with blockbusters? In 1973, The Exorcist became the first film since Gone With The Wind to pull in over $175 million at domestic box offices. The result was a designation as one of the Academy's Best Picture nominees, though it would lose the award to The Sting, a $156 million grosser in its own right.

The first films to reach $200 million, $300 million and $350 million respectively - Jaws, Star Wars and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial - all got nominations. But the gold remained out of their grasp.

When the number of $200 million grossers hit eight in the 80s, gargantuan numbers were no longer enough in and of themselves to score Best Picture placement. Only Raiders of the Lost Ark joined E.T. as the two such films to receive Best Picture nominations.

The box office bar continued to rise and soon, $300 million grosses were not interesting enough to entice the Academy.

There are still films that ride their monetary wave of buzz all the way to Oscar. The Sixth Sense received a Best Picture nomination in 1999 largely due to its surprising $293 million income. The film received five other nominations, a unique statistic for a genre film. But while $293 million for The Sixth Sense was a story six years ago, $300 million-plus for King Kong in 2005 is not.

Which brings us to this fall's line of high dollar expectations films.

Oscar talk has really kicked into high gear for likely blockbusters King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Kong has some jumping the gun, using Peter Jackson's recent Oscar success as ammunition in their argument. I would consider 11 wins for Lord of The Rings: Return of The King two years ago as more of a handicap than anything else (the "been there, done that" scenario). Worse, Kong is a remake, which is a handicap overcome by Heaven Can Wait and Mutiny on the Bounty among a precious few.

I think that $500 million is the next tier that will entice voting for money's sake. We'll see it eventually. 2000-2005 will mark a doubling of the number of $200 million grossers compared to the entirety of the 90s - in half the number of years. We've already had two $400 million films in this decade while we saw just two in the 90s.

There have been three notable surprise box office stories that are stirring Oscar buzz this year.

Batman Begins' steady incline to $205 million made it the second largest grossing film in a franchise of five installments that fizzled out in the late 90s. Does that mark it for nominations outside of the technical categories? Not likely.

March of the Penguins' out-of-the-blue $77 million haul suddenly positioned it as the second highest grossing non-IMAX documentary of all time. However, can we expect anything other than its forthcoming documentary feature nomination?

And Crash's above-mentioned sleeper-hit status helped it to sustain a tight faction of love within the industry that may, or may not, be enough to garner further recognition.

When it comes down to it, the almighty dollar might rule Hollywood's collective brain, but it doesn't rule the collective subconscious. The Academy will do, as always, exactly what it wants to do, and no matter how many awards are broken opening weekend, every film has to compete for the heart of every voting member.

Whether you agree with what their hearts tell them is a different story altogether.

November 22, 2005

Previous Oscartown Columns
11.15.05 - Where Have All The Cowgirls Gone?
11.08.05 - Imitation of Life
11.01.05 - Suggestion Card
10.25.05 - Youthful Digression
10.18.05 - Nothing New, Nothing Old... A Whole Lot of Nothing
09.01.05 - A Brave New 'Wood?

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