Money at the Movies Does Box Office Gold Mean a Best Picture Win

Money at the Movies Does Box Office Gold Mean a Best Picture Win Money at the Movies: Does Box Office Success Mean a Best Picture Win? Money at the Movies: Does Box Office Success Mean a Best Picture Win?Over the past decade, the Best Picture Awards relationship to box office success has  completely flipped.When Moonlight won the Oscar for Best Picture last year, there were a lot of thoughts running through people’s minds. Thoughts like:“Holy cow, what is happening right now!”“Oh man, someone is going to be in so much trouble for this!”“This monumental screw-up is the greatest moment in Oscars history.”“Why won’t Twitter load fast enough?!!!”One thought that probably didn’t go through your mind was, “Of course they gave it to Moonlight. Historical precedent would state that La La Land made far too much money at the box office to actually win.”Granted, the way that Moonlight won the awardâ€"with La La Land being accidentally announced as the winner and then mass pandemonium ensuingâ€"meant that any reaction more complicated than “OMG OMG OMG” was pretty much out.Still, if you had been do ing an office Oscar pool last year and had bet on Moonlight winning solely because it made way less money than La La Land … your instincts would have been correct.To celebrate the 2018 Oscars, we decided  to find out whether box office performance and a Best Picture win were linked. We took all the films that were nominated for Best Picture over the last 20 years (starting with the 1998 Oscars) and we looked at how the winners stacked up in terms of box office performance.What we found was pretty fascinating.Plus, as we head into the Academy Awards this weekend without any clear frontrunner, these financial tea leaves might help you pick yourself a Best Picture winner.We examined 20 years of Best Picture box office data.In the tables below, we’ve listed out all the Oscar winners and nominees for Best Picture over the last 20 years. Using data from Box Office Mojo, we looked out how much each winner and nominee earned at the domestic box office, and we ranked where each winner’ s box office haul stacked up against the total Best Picture field.Don’t feel like you have to sift through all the data yourself. That’s why we’re here. Feel free to skip past the tables and keep reading.But if you do want to look for yourself, there is something important to keep in mind:In 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that they would be expanding the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10. The decision was made after the critically-lauded and wildly successful Batman flick The Dark Knight failed to make the five-movie cut.Two years later, the Academy tweaked the rule. They introduced a voting system that would allow anywhere between five and ten movies to be nominated. Since that change was made, every Best Picture field has included either eight or nine nominees.With that out of the way, here’s your 20-year financial breakdown of the Best Picture winners and nominees…(via Box Office Mojo)2017Best Picture WinnerMoonlightBox Off ice Gross$27,854,932Rank Among Nominees8th (out of 9)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeHidden Figures$169,607,287La La Land$151,101,803Arrival$100,546,139Hacksaw Ridge$67,209,615Fences$57,682,904Lion$51,738,905Manchester by the Sea$47,695,371Moonlight (2016)$27,854,932Hell or High Water$27,007,8442016Best Picture WinnerSpotlightBox Office Gross$45,055,776Rank Among Nominees6th (out of 8)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Martian$228,433,663The Revenant$183,637,894Mad Max: Fury Road$153,636,354Bridge of Spies$72,313,754The Big Short$70,259,870Spotlight$45,055,776Brooklyn$38,322,743Room$14,677,6542015Best Picture WinnerBirdmanBox Office Gross$42,340,598Rank Among Nominees5th (out of 8)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeAmerican Sniper$350,126,372The Imitation Game$91,125,683The Grand Budapest Hotel$59,301,324Selma$52,076,908Birdman$42,340,598The Theory of Everything$35,893,537Boyhood$25,352,281Whiplash$13,092,0002014Best Picture Winner12 Years a SlaveBox Office Gross$27,854 ,932Rank Among Nominees5th (out of 9)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeGravity$274,092,705American Hustle$150,117,807The Wolf of Wall Street$116,900,694Captain Phillips$107,100,85512 Years a Slave$56,671,993Philomena$37,709,979Dallas Buyers Club$27,298,285Her (2013)$25,568,251Nebraska$17,654,9122013Best Picture WinnerArgoBox Office Gross$136,025,503Rank Among Nominees4th (out of 9)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeLincoln$182,207,973Django Unchained$162,805,434Les Miserables (2012)$148,809,770Argo$136,025,503Silver Linings Playbook$132,092,958Life of Pi$124,987,023Zero Dark Thirty$95,720,716Beasts of the Southern Wild$12,795,746Amour$6,739,4922012Best Picture WinnerThe ArtistBox Office Gross$44,671,682Rank Among Nominees7th (out of 9)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Help$169,708,112The Descendants$82,584,160War Horse$79,884,879Moneyball$75,605,492Hugo$73,864,507Midnight in Paris$56,817,045The Artist$44,671,682Extremely Loud Incredibly Close$31,847,881The Tree of Life$ 13,303,3192011Best Picture WinnerThe King’s SpeechBox Office Gross$135,453,143Rank Among Nominees4th (out of 10)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeToy Story 3$415,004,880Inception$292,576,195True Grit$171,243,005The Kings Speech$135,453,143Black Swan$106,954,678The Social Network$96,962,694The Fighter$93,617,009The Kids Are All Right$20,811,365127 Hours$18,335,230Winters Bone$6,531,5032010Best Picture WinnerThe Hurt LockerBox Office Gross$17,017,811Rank Among Nominees8th (out of 10)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeAvatar$749,766,139Up$293,004,164The Blind Side$255,959,475Inglourious Basterds$120,540,719District 9$115,646,235Up in the Air$83,823,381Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire$47,566,524The Hurt Locker$17,017,811An Education$12,574,914A Serious Man$9,228,7682009Best Picture WinnerSlumdog MillionaireBox Office Gross$141,319,92Rank Among Nominees1st (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeSlumdog Millionaire$141,319,928The Curious Case of Benjamin Button $127,509,326The Reader$34,194,407Milk$31,841,299Frost/Nixon$18,622,0312008Best Picture WinnerNo Country for Old MenBox Office Gross$74,283,625Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeJuno$143,495,265No Country for Old Men$74,283,625Atonement$50,927,067Michael Clayton$49,033,882There Will Be Blood$40,222,5142007Best Picture WinnerThe DepartedBox Office Gross$132,384,315Rank Among Nominees1st (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Departed$132,384,315Little Miss Sunshine$59,891,098The Queen$56,441,711Babel$34,302,837Letters from Iwo Jima$13,756,0822006Best Picture WinnerCrashBox Office Gross$54,580,300Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeBrokeback Mountain$83,043,761Crash$54,580,300Munich$47,403,685Good Night, and Good Luck.$31,558,003Capote$28,750,5302005Best Picture WinnerMillion Dollar BabyBox Office Gross$100,492,203Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Aviator$102,610,330 Million Dollar Baby$100,492,203Ray$75,331,600Sideways$71,503,593Finding Neverland$51,680,6132004Best Picture WinnerThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingBox Office Gross$377,027,325Rank Among Nominees1st (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King$377,027,325Seabiscuit$120,277,854Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World$93,927,920Mystic River$90,135,191Lost in Translation$44,585,4532003Best Picture WinnerChicagoBox Office Gross$170,687,518Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers$339,789,881Chicago$170,687,518Gangs of New York$77,812,000The Hours$41,675,994The Pianist$32,572,5772002Best Picture WinnerA Beautiful MindBox Office Gross$170,742,341Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring$313,364,114A Beautiful Mind$170,742,341Moulin Rouge!$57,386,607Gosford Park$41,308,615In the Bed room$35,930,6042001Best Picture WinnerGladiatorBox Office Gross$187,705,427Rank Among Nominees1st (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeGladiator$187,705,427Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon$128,078,872Erin Brockovich$125,595,205Traffic$124,115,725Chocolat$71,509,3632000Best Picture WinnerAmerican BeautyBox Office Gross$130,096,601Rank Among Nominees3rd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeThe Sixth Sense$293,506,292The Green Mile$136,801,374American Beauty$130,096,601The Cider House Rules$57,545,092The Insider$29,089,9121999Best Picture WinnerShakespeare in LoveBox Office Gross$100,317,794Rank Among Nominees2nd (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeSaving Private Ryan$216,540,909Shakespeare in Love$100,317,794Life Is Beautiful$57,247,384The Thin Red Line$36,400,491Elizabeth$30,082,6991998Best Picture WinnerTitanicBox Office Gross$600,788,188Rank Among Nominees1st (out of 5)Best Picture NomineesTotal Box OfficeTitanic$600,788,188As Good as It Gets$148,478,01 1Good Will Hunting$138,433,435L.A. Confidential$64,616,940The Full Monty$45,950,122Thats a lot of movies, right? Well, we crunched the numbers, and here’s what we found Taking the Best Picture field from 5 to 10 nominees changed everything.From 1998 to 2009, when the Best Picture field was only five nominees, the winner was almost always either the highest-grossing or the second-highest grossing nominee. The only year this didn’t happen was 2003, when American Beauty beat out The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense, both of which hard larger box office hauls. (American Beauty still grossed over $130 million because, well, we don’t really know. That movie is bad.)Since the Best Picture slate expanded in 2009, no top-grossing film has won Best Picture. The same goes for second-place and third. The there have been only two winnersâ€"out of a possible eightâ€"that sat in the top half of their respective fields. Those films were The King’s Speech in 2011 and Argo in 2013, both of whic h placed fourth.12 Years a Slave,  which won in 2014, presents a unique case. It wasn’t in the top half of the field but it wasn’t in the bottom half either. As the fifth highest-grossing film out of nine total nominees, it sat in the dead center of the pack.The five winners who finished in the bottom half the pack were:Moonlight, which finished eighth out of nine nominees.Spotlight, which finished sixth out of eight nominees.Birdman, which finished fifth out of eight nominees.The Artist, which finished seventh out of nine nominees.The Hurt Locker, which finished eighth out of 10 nominees.No movie that’s won Best Picture has been the lowest-grossing nominee. The closest was Moonlight, which was not only second-last with only $27,854,932 at the box office, but it only beat out the last-place finisher, Hell or High Water, by a little over $800,000.If you look back over the past five years, you can see a steady decline in how well the Best Picture winners have performed against t he rest of the field. Beginning with Argo in 2013, which finished fourth out of nine, the Best Picture winners then finished:fifth of out nine (12 Years a Slave, 2014)fifth out of eight (Birdman, 2015)sixth out of eight (Spotlight, 2016)eighth out of nine (Moonlight, 2016).Movies that win Best Picture now make a lot less money (and are seen by a lot fewer people) than the movies that used win. From 1998 to 2009, the average Best Picture winner grossed $186,702,130. Since the slate was expanded in 2009, the average Best Picture winner grosses $63,136,430. That’s less than half what they made before!When in doubt: You can always blame superheroes.That last finding probably has a lot more to do with Hollywood at large than the way the Academy votes. In the past decade, studios have shifted away from making the kinds of prestigious mid-tier movies for adults that could gross between 150 and 200 million and also win a bunch of Oscars.Nowadays, studios mostly make huge tentpole action m oviesâ€"most of them based off of comic booksâ€"that need to gross over 300 million in the U.S. just to be successful. The studios then they bankroll a bunch of small, indie-type movies that aren’t expected to make a bunch of money and are basically designed in a lab to win awards.This change in the movie industry has led to an Academy Awards landscape where, despite the expanded slate of Best Picture nominees, the only movies that have a real shot at winning are the kinds of films that most Americans have never seenâ€"or sometimes even heard of!There are some signs that this is changing. For one, The Academy is starting to look at comic book movies as the kinds of films that might be worthy of a Best Picture nomination. It helps that studios are figuring this out too, and are starting to make some comic book movies that have the Oscars in mind.This year, the X-men film Logan  is nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. It’s the first superhero movie to ever have been nomi nated for such a prestigious award! It’s also a sign that the Oscars could be warming up to the kind of superhero story that, lest we forget, was the reason they moved to 10 nominees in the first place!And luckily, the 2019 awards will have the perfect test case in Black Panther, a movie that has critical acclaim, an ever-expanding pile of box office cash, and a complete hold on the broader cultural conversation.So what about the 2018 Best Picture award?Alright. Let’s get our magic eight balls out and start prognosticating. Here are the nominees and their box office totals:NomineeBox OfficeDunkirk$188,045,546Get Out$176,040,665The Post$79,004,609The Shape of Water$55,516,822Darkest Hour$54,550,507Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri$50,275,720Lady Bird$47,360,177Phantom Thread$19,091,409Call Me by Your Name$15,764,116Based on previous awards, total nominations, and overall buzz, the top four contenders are generally assumed to be:Get OutThe Shape of WaterThree Billboards Ou tside Ebbing, MissouriLady BirdJudging by the box office totals of previous winners, we can pretty safely eliminate Get Out. Apparently, that movie’s just made too much dang money for the Academy to take it seriously.This leaves us with The Shape of Water; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and Lady Bird. Lady Bird grossed the lowest amount, at $47 million, with Three Billboards earning $50 million and The Shape of Water earning $55 million. Out of nine nominated films, The Shape of Water placed fourth, Three Billboards placed sixth, and Lady Bird placed seventh.While The Shape of Water has the most nominations (not to mention a number of previous wins), winning Best Picture would make it only the third winner since 2009 to gross in the top of half of the nominees. We’re going to say that it won’t make that kind of history. So it’s out.This leaves us with Lady Bird and Three Billboards. The general trend would point to Lady Bird as it is the lower-grossing of the two , but the difference between the third-lowest grossing film and the fourth is pretty negligible.And so, using our gut reaction as a tiebreaker, we’re going to predict that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri will win Best Picture at the 2018 Academy Awards. Come at us, Twitter!Actually, before we go, there are a few caveats with this pick that we need to  express:Over the past couple years, the Academy has been making a much-needed push to make their voting body younger and more diverse  by adding new members. This might have had an effect on Moonlight beating La La Land last year, and it could come into play in this year’s race too. If these new members really tip the scales, then Get Out and Lady Bird will probably stand to benefit.If you were to ask us who we think should win, then our answer is easy: Get Out should win Best Picture. Not only was it our favorite movie that we saw this year, but we think that it would be good for the Academy to start honoring movies that had some effect on the larger cultureâ€"not just on Twitter. We’d like box office grosses above $100 million to become a feature, not a bug. We’d also be fine with Lady Bird winning cuz Lady Bird was dope.If Darkest Hour wins, we’ll riot. Maybe meet up at barricades?Random observationsThe highest-grossing nominee of the past 20 years was Avatar, directed by James Cameron. The second highest-grossing nominee of the past 20 years was Titanic, also directed by James Cameron.From 2002 through 2004, the three highest-grossing nominees were the three Lord of the Rings movies. The third movie, Return of the King, won Best Picture.Moonlight was not the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner of the past 20 years. That honor goes to The Hurt Locker, which grossed $17 million, over ten million less than Moonlight.The box office floor for a Best Picture nomination appears to be six million. The two lowest-earning nominees were Winters Bone in 2011, which earned  $6,531,503, and Amour in 201 3, which earned  $6,739,492.There was no year prior to 2009 where all five nominees grossed over $100 million. The closest was 2001 when four nominees (Gladiator; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Erin Brockovich; and Traffic) all crossed the $100 million mark. The only nominee that didn’t was Chocolat, which grossed $71 millionâ€"more than each of the last four Best Picture winners.In both 2010 and 2010, the two years that had a mandatory field of 10 nominees, there were five nominees that grossed over $100 million. In 2013, with nine nominees, there were six.In regards to 2013: Weirdly, with a total of six nominees grossing over $100 million, the highest-grossing of them all was Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a movie where Daniel-Day Lewis wandered around in a shawl and had a puffy and winded James Spader run around to do his bidding.2005 winner Million Dollar Baby is a very unique case when it comes to box office performance. While it grossed over $100 million in total and was the second-highest grossing nominee (behind Martin Scorseses The Aviator), it only made $8.5 million of that total before it was nominated. Million Dollar Baby made $53 million during the nomination period and an additional $35 million after it won.The Revenant, a Best Picture Nominee in 2016, somehow grossed over $180 million. To anyone who saw The Revenant, that box office number is wiiiiiiild. How did Leonardo DiCaprio grunting in the woods for two hours make that much money?!We all remember when Crash famously upset Brokeback Mountain at the 2006 Oscars, because it was awful in every conceivable way. But did you know that Brokeback Mountain actually grossed more than Crash? By almost $30 million? Cuz we sure didn’t. It doesn’t make up for losing, but at least it’s something.Remember when The Artist won Best Picture in 2012? We don’t have any interesting financial facts about that. We just wanted to say: that movie sucked.If you liked this piece, check out some of our other deep dives into the financial side of pop culture:Stranger Things: What did Life Cost in Hawkins, Indiana in 1983 vs Today?How Much Would it Cost to Travel to Every Star Wars Filming Location?How Student-Athlete Insurance Protects Financial FuturesWould you like to read more about the financial side of movies? Let us know! You can  email us  or you can find us on  Facebook  and  Twitter.