Part of the reason why the Oscars keep losing their relevance is due to the fact that there is a ever-growing division between what films audiences pay to watch in theaters and what actually gets celebrated as the Best Picture winner.
The Oscars don’t have the influence or power they once had. The token industry voter keeps isolating his and herself from the average moviegoer’s actual cinematic interests. People couldn’t care less what wins Best Picture nowadays.
However, It wasn’t always like that. For many decades you used to have winners that were actual box-office successes, mostly due to stellar word of mouth: Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Gladiator, Unforgiven, Shakespeare In Love, American Beauty, Million Dollar Baby, A Beautiful Mind, The Return of the King, Titanic, The Departed, Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech and many more. All of these grossed well over $100 million domestically, some double or triple that amount.
Something seemed to change around the last ten years. Maybe it was the introduction of streaming or maybe it was the fact that less creative risks were being taken in Hollywood, but every single Best Picture winner since 2011 was barely seen by the average moviegoer: The Artist ($44 million), 12 Years A Slave ($56 million), Birdman ($42 million), Spotlight ($45 million), Moonlight ($27 million), The Shape of Water ($63 million) and Parasite ($53 million). Some of these films are of top-notch quality, but mainstream America couldn’t care less about them.
If Deadline’s numbers are any indication, “CODA,” last year’s Best Picture winner, was seen in just over a million households. Apple even held theatrical screenings, in select theaters, but not many people showed up for those. When all was said and done, “CODA” ended up making around $2 million at the box-office.
A similar story happened with the previous year’s Best Picture winner, Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland.” That film made around $3.7 million at the box-office. In fact, out of the 95 Best Picture winners in Oscar history, “CODA” and “Nomadland” are respectively the 84th and 85th worst-grossing films. The other 10 films that made less money than them were released between 1931-1955 — if you take into account inflation, then “CODA” and “Nomadland” are easily the worst ever.
Remember when people were complaining that 2009 Best Picture winner “The Hurt Locker” was barely seen? At least it made $17 million domestically.
Maybe a course-correction will happen this year and Oscar voters will go for “Top Gun: Maverick,” a populist film that infectiously reinvented the old-school blockbuster. Or, maybe, “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” which made $70 million, very good for a pandemic era indie, will take the top prize.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.