Those Best Picture nominees still in theaters did not get much of an Oscar bump in 2024. We’re a long way from the days when the imprimatur of an Academy Award nomination excited the public enough to spin box office gold.
Since TheWrap is the only outlet reporting on this with anything close to honesty, here’s its math…
Poor Things “expanded by 900 theaters to 2,300 locations…[and] added $3 million, edging out the $2.95 million it grossed on New Year’s weekend to earn the best weekend gross of its run.”
American Fiction “grossed $2.9 million after doubling its theater count to 1,702 locations.”
Oppenheimer, which has been available on home video for a while, grossed $1 million on a limited IMAX release. Zone of Interest “expanded to 313 theaters and made $1 million this weekend.” The Holdovers, which is already streaming on Peacock, earned $520,000 on 1,267 screens.
And then comes the pandemic nonsense-excuse…
[T]he pandemic has drastically changed the game for the specialty market. With most movies hitting home platforms faster than before 2020, the ecosystem that allowed Best Picture winners like “The Shape of Water,” “Moonlight” and “Parasite” to steadily build word of mouth through the last quarter of the calendar year and sustain that into the first quarter of the following year is all but gone, as demonstrated by the arrival of “The Holdovers” on streaming two months after its late October limited release.
…
The question now is whether that bump will have any sort of staying power, or if it will quickly subside given the diminished interest in the Oscars compared to even five years ago. Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian believes its more likely that the numbers for “Poor Things” and “American Fiction” will fall off, but thinks there’s still a chance that the lack of major tentpole films in February may allow word-of-mouth for these awards contenders to linger.
The problem is not the pandemic. Nor is it these shortened theatrical windows. If it were, Barbie would not have made $1.5 billion worldwide.
What’s changed is that Oscar has lost touch with normal people. There was a time when an Oscar nomination could turn a little drama about divorce into 1979’s top-grossing movie. Those of us who love movies would look at the Oscar nominations and then run out to see them so we could watch the telecast and choose who to root for. Back then, we trusted Oscar.
For movie lovers like myself, the Oscars were the Super Bowl.
Not anymore.
The Oscars are meaningless to normal people. The reasons for this are legion: Nomadland (2020), Parasite (2019), The Shape of Water (2017), Moonlight (2016), Birdman (2014), The Artist (2011), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Crash (2004), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and CODA (2021).
Nobody watches that shit (okay, I did enjoy Nomadland).
The populist Motion Picture Academy has become the Independent Spirit Awards by way of the Berkeley faculty lounge.
In my house, the Oscars have become a warning to avoid dull movies full of gay sex, self-regard, preening pretension, and political talking points.
The Oscar brand is dead. A movie receiving an Oscar nomination is like a Republican receiving Mitt Romney’s endorsement — a sign to shop elsewhere. Sure, I may eventually catch a few of 2024’s nominees — like The Holdovers, Oppenheimer, and American Fiction — but the days of needing to see them are long over. My time is valuable, and there are too many great movies I want to see again and again. And in those movies, men don’t kiss one another, no one shames me, and I’m not told what to think.
Burn, Hollywood, burn.
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