The Oscar Numbers: Follow the Money

Here’s a chart of the top 10 Best Picture contenders (in my view) along with a chart of last year’s nominees (as of January 1st) for handy comparison.

I’ve heard it said several times that the nominee with the second highest gross often wins Best Picture. Feel free to debunk or verify that claim. Here are some hard facts:

In the past 10 years, 11 best picture nominees grossed over $100 mil before Oscar nominations were announced: The Departed, Seabiscuit, A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, Erin Brokovich, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan, and the 3 films of The Lord of ka-Ching trilogy. (In other words, roughly one out of every five nominees had a box-office exceeding $100, pre-nomination.)

In the past decade, only 4 films earning less than $10 mil before nominations were announced had the critical mass to overcome their weak dowry: The Pianist ($9 mil), There Will Be Blood ($8.5 mi), Million Dollar Baby ($8 mil), and Letters from Iwo Jima ($2.5 mil). In light of those stats, Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler need to go wide and start raking in some cash, and fast.

We’ll update this year’s top contenders the night before nominations — and I’ll make adjustments to the 10 titles, depending on what we learn from the PGA and DGA nominees. For a look at where last year’s nominees stood on the day nominations were announced, check out the chart after the cut.

Comparing total gross to pre-nom gross it’s pretty easy to see which movie benefited most from it’s rack of nominations. Not Juno; it was already headed north of $100 mil with or without an Oscar-nom kickstart. Atonement nearly tripled its domestic box-office take between nominations day and Oscar night. But There Will Be Blood increased its earnings by a factor of 20.

Which movie stands to gain the most from multiple nominations this year? Which is beyond help? I have my theories; what are yours?