Do Oscar Winners Also Rule the Box Office?

Data from Box Office Mojo shows that the past five years' Best Picture winners at the Oscars were far from flops when released in theatres but couldn't hold a candle to the highest-grossing movies in the year of their release. In the 2023 edition of the awards show, held this Sunday in Hollywood, Calif., it was more close. Oppenheimer, the year's third-highest grossing movie, won Best Picture and 2023's biggest success, Barbie, received an Oscar snub. Oppenheimer grossed close to $1 billion in theatres last year and Barbie made 50 percent more than that - $1.446 billion. However, neither director Greta Gerwig nor leading actress Margot Robbie received nominations. At yesterday's ceremony, the movie took home Best Original Song for Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell's What Was I Made For?, but on top of losing Best Picture to Oppenheimer, hyped performances by supporting cast Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera also weren't heeded with awards.

Yet, as the year's highest-grossing flick, Barbie has had a major influence - awards or not. Other than dominating memes, music and public discourse for a while around its release, its commercial success transcends the silver screen. Mattel's sales, which were riding a pandemic high in 2021 and 2022 like other toymaker's, could sustain these exceptionally high number through 2023 - likely on the back of the movie release - as other pandemic winners started to struggle.

The difference between Best Picture winner and box office top performer was especially pronounced in 2021. Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed around $1.9 billion, while that year's Oscar winner, CODA, only made $2 million. This can be traced back to the rise of high-quality original programming by streaming services like Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix, which then see limited releases in selected markets to minimal earnings to qualify for the Oscars. The Apple-Studios-produced CODA, for example, was only shown in theaters in three countries: Italy, Mexico and South Korea.

Utilizing this quasi-loophole paid off for the tech giant's streaming branch, winning out over star-studded epics like Dune, which made $433 million throughout its theatrical run, or Don't Look Up, an effort of fellow streaming service Netflix, which managed to snag a nomination despite only generating $791,000 in Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy and South Korea.

This year, the Best Picture nominees include one movie mainly distributed via a video streaming service, Netflix's Maestro, starring Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper. However, with breakout hits Barbie ($1.4 billion) and Oppenheimer ($958 million), the former of which also left its marks on the cultural discourse, among its ranks, it's not unlikely that either half of Barbenheimer will take home the award.