I read this think-piece today:
https://www.theringer.com/2018/2/7/16984532/oscars-best-picture-2009-10-nominees-dark-knight-superheroes-star-wars-last-jedi-wonder-woman-loganIt looks back on the Academy's notion of expanding the number of Best Picture nominees up to 10. This was a response to the trend that saw the best picture nominations increasingly going to just arthouse movies that few viewers actually saw, combined with the observation that the Oscar broadcast does good ratings when popular movies are up for awards and poor ratings when popular movies are not up for awards. The idea was to make it a "bigger tent" to appeal to a wider audience. "We will cast a wider net" was the logic. With more nominees, they could have have room for art movies and indie movies and well-made blockbusters and other films that just wouldn't get the recognition if it was restricted to just 5 nominees.
Instead of a "big tent", the result has been that even more arthouse movies get Best Picture nominations. Instead of a "wider net", it's a net that's nabbing the same small fishes, but more of them. Of this year's 9 nominees, only two of them-- Get Out! and Dunkirk-- did any significant box office at all. Some of the nominees literally didn't do any box office in 2017, as they received a bare minimum number of screenings to qualify for eligibility for awards, then shelved for a 2018 release to cash in on awards season. The result is that the combined total box office for this year's 9 nominees is about $600 million dollars, of which well over half was from Get Out! and Dunkirk alone (roughly $180M apiece). So we have two commercial successes plus seven movies that hardly anybody saw.
By comparison, Star Wars: The Last Jedi alone made roughly as much as all 9 best picture nominees combined. Of this year's top 3 films, Star Wars ($600+ M) received couple of technical nominations and a music nomination for John Williams's orchestral score. Beauty and the Beast ($500+ M) received a costume nomination and a set production nomination. Wonder Woman ($400+ M) received no nominations at all. Of the remaining top 10 box office films, the only other nomination is a special effects nomination for Guardians Of The Galaxy vol 2. The 10 films with somewhere in the range of $3.7 billion of ticket sales between them received a total of 6 nominations, all in minor categories.
Logan, the year's 11th biggest box office success, is the top grossing movie to receive a major nomination, for Best Screenplay. After that, Dunkirk and Get Out! (#14 and #15 respectively) are the top-grossing movies to get major nominations (both are up for Best Picture, Best Director, and a Best Actor nomination for Get Out! as well.)
Great for Get Out! of course, which was quite a surprise as both a commercial and critical success. But if the premise is that the Oscars get good TV ratings when popular movies are in the mix, and do poorly when popular movies aren't in the mix, one has to suspect that this years Oscars are going to do poorly in terms of TV audiences, as the author of the above article says:
A year ago, I coyly suggested the Academy nominate Deadpool to disrupt the inevitable La La Land–vs.-Moonlight showdown. My intuition that millions of people wouldn’t watch the show was right. Last year was a surprisingly wondrous one at the movies, but I suspect that the audience for the Oscars will be low again — perhaps in the range of 35 million. And in what has been declared the most unpredictable race in more than a decade.
This year has been hailed as the year of women in Hollywood. Eleven women are up for major awards this year. Five for Best Actress. Five for Best Supporting Actress. And Greta Gerwig, as Best Director for Ladybird, an arthouse movie that nobody has actually seen. Beyond Greta Gerwig, it's the same as every other year. 10 actresses, plus some costume designers and makeup artists. Patty Jenkins and her female-celebrating, 3rd biggest movie of the year blockbuster are not even at the show.
There could be other reasons people decide to tune in this year, of course. People might tune in to see who fires the biggest Harvey Weinstein blast. People might tune in to see if Rose McGowan gets anywhere near a microphone and goes scorched earth. Or if she shows up with a flamethrower and literally burns the Academy down. It has been an interesting year for Hollywood in terms of off-screen, behind the scenes stuff being made public, so who knows if maybe some of that will draw viewers to this year's broadcast.
-k