‘The biggest commercial force of all time’: Why did the Oscars peak in 1998?

Although Titanic was exceptional, it was part of a broader pattern: many of the best picture winners of the 20th century were also among the most profitable films of their respective years. “From 1927 to 1976, nearly 90% of Best Picture Oscars were awarded to films that were also in the 10 highest-grossing pictures of the year,” film historian Gene Del Vecchio wrote in the Huffington Post in 2014. “Academy voters and audiences alike enjoyed serious romantic dramas like Casablanca, adventures like Around the World in 80 Days, historical dramas like Ben-Hur, and musicals like My Fair. Lady, our collective minds and tastes were the same.”

Del Vecchio says there was a shift in 1978, when Star Wars was a box office behemoth and Woody Allen’s smaller Annie Hall won an Oscar. But it was still common for Best Picture winners to be huge hits in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1990, Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves grossed approximately $425 million (the equivalent of $1 billion or £740 million today) worldwide. In 1996, Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump grossed $678 million (the equivalent of $1.4 billion or £1 billion today). This may be why so many people watched the Oscars: they actually cared about the films that were nominated.

The great transformation after the millennium

Nowadays… not so much. In the 1990s, the global box office for all Best Picture winners combined was around $5 billion, while in the 2000s, that number dropped to $2 billion. As we look at the statistics, it’s worth noting that in the 1990s, many Oscar winners not only made a fortune, they also cost a fortune. The average budget of a Best Picture winner that decade was $50 million. In the 2000s, the average dropped to $20 million.

The films that won the Best Picture award in 2009 and 2012: Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, and The Artist, all cost about $15 million. And when the best picture award in 2010 went to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker – with a budget of $15m, totaling around $50m (equivalent to $73m or £54m today) – instead of her ex-husband’s Avatar – with a budget of $237m, totaling around $3bn (equivalent to $4.3bn or £3.2bn today) – the writing was on the wall. The Oscars are no longer about big-ticket blockbusters, and the ceremony no longer attracts large audiences. Last year’s winner, Anora, had a budget of just $6 million and a grand total of $58 million. When the budgets and box office receipts of Best Picture winners dwindle, the ceremony’s viewing numbers seem to dwindle as well.