The Oscar season is supposed to be Hollywood’s months-long prom, a time to celebrate the best that the film industry has to offer.
But so far, it’s been weirdly muted, with more attention being paid to what didn’t get nominated and changes to the Oscar ceremony that have irked film Twitter and extremely online cinephiles.
When the Oscars were announced on February 8, the nominations were a Google (GOOGL) trending topic for one day, but since then none of the films have stayed in Google Trends. That admittedly isn’t the most precise measurement of public interest, but it is generally a way to gauge if people are actively seeking out information on a given topic, such as where they can see Oscar-nominated films.
And this year’s muted interest in the Oscar’s could be trouble for industries that have traditionally counted on Oscar buzz for a bottom-line boost.
Oscar Nominations Drive People To The Streamers, Not Theaters
In years past, it wasn’t unheard of for Oscar nominations to bring attention to films that were critical darlings and beloved in the industry, but hadn’t broken through to the wide public.
More than 20 years ago, Oscar nominations for “American Beauty” were enough to make the film a huge success, as it went onto earn $130 million in North America, with 43% of earnings coming after the 2000 Oscar nominations were announced. And yes, that film later underwent a critical reevaluation for the negative and is tainted by the allegations against Kevin Spacey, who won the Best Actor trophy for his lead performance, but the point here is that there was a time when Oscar nominations could drive ticket sales, and people were willing to watch domestic dramas in the theaters.
The ability of Oscar nominations to increase a film’s box office was still significant last decade, as 65% of the box office for the 2015 film "Room," for which Brie Larson won Best Actress, came after its nominations. Even as recently as 2019, nominations for “Green Book,” which eventually won Best Picture, drove 50% of its $85 million earnings.
Theater chains such as Cinemark (CNK) and AMC Entertainment (AMC) would absolutely love it if this year’s nominations drove people to check out some films. But therein lies the rub.
AMC in particular was struggling even before the COVID-19 pandemic made seeing a film in theaters impossible in 2020 and undesirable for many in 2021. Instead, film fans watched Oscar-nominated films such 2021 Best Picture winner “Nomadland” on Disney's (DIS) Hulu and “Judas and the Black Messiah” via AT&T's (T) HBO Max.
For years, theaters were having a hard time getting people to come out and see a film that wasn’t a superhero movie or an action franchise in theaters, as audiences knew that any smaller film they might want to see will either premiere on a streamer, or show up there shortly after it's in theaters.
The pandemic has only accelerated this trend. A few years prior, film fans might have gone and seen Oscar nominated films such as 2019’s “Parasite” in theaters to see what they buzz is about, but this year all but three of the Oscar nominated films are available on streaming services, and two of the films predicted to take home the awards, “The Power of the Dog,” and “Don’t Look Up,” were Netflix (NFLX) exclusives.
Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed and underperforming “West Side Story” remake will be on Disney+ and HBO Max next month, and Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” is available to rent, which means the only Best Picture nominee that is only available in theaters is Paul Thomas Anderson’s bildungsroman “Licorice Pizza.”
So Oscar season, even one as quiet as this year’s, is still good news for the streaming services. Those services almost never give out numbers for how popular a given movie or TV series is (very often even the creators and directors don’t have the exact information), so it’s unclear how much the nominations are driving traffic and subscriptions, though Netflix did tout that the Leonardo DiCaprio starring “Don’t Look Up” its second-most watched original film ever. But as is becoming apparent in this new film era, what’s good for streaming services often isn’t good for theaters.
Netflix
Changes To Oscars Are Unlikely To Reserve Ratings Slide
Both Jimmy Kimmel and director Kevin Smith have slammed the Academy for not nominating “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” last year’s highest-earning film by a significant margin. (It recently overtook “Avatar,” to become the third highest-grossing film of all time.)
It’s long been a common refrain that the Academy nominates critical and art house favorites (or middlebrow Oscar bait, if you’re being unkind) instead of popular films. While it’s never been easier for a curious viewer to catch-up on this year’s Oscar nominees, this year’s crop of films have been especially dinged for not penetrating the public’s imagination.
It’s long been a common refrain that the Academy nominates critical and art-house favorites (or middlebrow Oscar bait, if you’re being unkind) instead of popular films. While it’s never been easier for a curious viewer to catch-up on this year’s Oscar nominees, this year’s crop of films have been especially dinged for not penetrating the public’s imagination.
Ever since “The Dark Knight” failed to get a nomination in 2009, the lack of award show recognition has been blamed for the decline in ratings for the Oscar broadcast. And since the Academy’s voters have once again doubled down on the stance of “you come to us, we don’t come to you,” the producers behind this year’s Oscars have taken the step of changing up this year’s format.
The awards for documentary short, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live-action short and sound, won’t be broadcast live, but will be pre-taped. Instead, there will be more room for comedy and musical bits.
This move has already brought a backlash online from those who accuse the Academy of pandering to casual filmgoers who seem to have tuned out from the Oscar race while alienating the creative community, who see the move as disrespectful to the technical field.
But most likely something had to be done. Last year’s Oscar’s brought in 23 million viewers a 51% drop from the 18.69 million viewers who tuned in 2020, and quite a drop from the 71.3 million total viewers who watched in 2011. Disney's ABC pays a large and undisclosed licensing fee to broadcast the Oscars, and the critic and film historian Mark Harris asked on Twitter whether the network forced the change on the Academy to boost ratings, or if the Academy made the choice on its own.
Now the question that AMC executives must wonder is if this is all part of a long COVID hangover that can be shaken off. Is there any way we can all at least go back to, say, 2018 when people cared enough to debate whether “The Shape Of Water” should beat “Get Out,” of is seeing any non-blockbuster film an increasingly niche activity, and strictly something audiences turn to streaming services for?
Surely ABC is wondering if audiences will ever care enough to watch the Oscars again, or are they content to watch the best moments on YouTube and read a write-up from a funny blogger who is paid to watch the entire thing?
