Oscar winners at the box office — 2023
Will the Academy give Best Picture to a Top 10 film for the first time in 20 years?
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For most of the Academy’s history, the award for Best Picture has gone to a fairly big box-office hit, a film that appealed to the vast majority of moviegoers everywhere.
That all changed in 2005, when the award went to Crash, the first Best Picture winner (in my lifetime, at least) that was not one of the Top 25 hits of its year. In fact, Crash, which grossed only $54.6 million, ranked way, way down at #49.
For the next several years, the Best Picture winners alternated between relatively big hits and somewhat smaller box-office performers—but for over a decade now, the award has almost always gone to films that were outside of the Top 35 if not the Top 60. Two years ago, it went to a film, CODA, that not only never got a theatrical release, but was only available via one of the less-popular streaming services, Apple TV+.
Things began to change last year, though, when Everything Everywhere All at Once won the top prize. That sleeper hit nudged its way into the Top 25 soon after it won its trophy, and now, the front-runner for this year’s award is a genuine blockbuster in the form of Oppenheimer, a box-office smash that has already grossed $952.9 million worldwide and could cross the billion-dollar line if it gets a re-release.
If Oppenheimer does win the award, it will be the first film in the Top 20 of its year to win Best Picture since 2010’s The King’s Speech, and the first in the Top 10 of its year to win Best Picture since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
As ever, we shall see.
For now, here are the nominees, with their grosses and box-office rankings for 2023 as of the day they were nominated (i.e. January 23):
Barbie — $636,238,421 — 1st
Oppenheimer — $326,974,650 — 5th
Killers of the Flower Moon — $67,375,741 — 35th
Poor Things — $20,483,873 — 70th
The Holdovers — $18,767,865 — 73rd
Past Lives — $10,923,569 — 97th
American Fiction — $7,959,023 — 107th
Anatomy of a Fall — $3,952,237 — 138th
The Zone of Interest — $1,109,086 — 178th
Maestro — N/A — N/A
As before, here are the Best Picture winners (with box-office stats) going back to the year of my birth; I’ll add this year’s winner after it is announced March 10:
2023 — 5 — $329.3 million — Oppenheimer
2022 — 25 — $77.2 million — Everything Everywhere All at Once
2021 — N/A — N/A — CODA
2020 — 84 — $3.7 million — Nomadland
2019 — 54 — $53.4 million — Parasite
2018 — 36 — $85.1 million — Green Book
2017 — 46 — $63.9 million — The Shape of Water
2016 — 92 — $27.9 million — Moonlight
2015 — 62 — $45.1 million — Spotlight
2014 — 78 — $42.3 million — Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
2013 — 62 — $56.7 million — 12 Years a Slave
2012 — 22 — $136.0 million — Argo
2011 — 71 — $44.7 million — The Artist
2010 — 18 — $135.5 million — The King’s Speech
2009 — 116 — $17.0 million — The Hurt Locker
2008 — 16 — $141.3 million — Slumdog Millionaire
2007 — 36 — $74.3 million — No Country for Old Men
2006 — 15 — $132.4 million — The Departed
2005 — 49 — $54.6 million — Crash
2004 — 24 — $100.5 million — Million Dollar Baby
2003 — 1 — $377.0 million — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2002 — 10 — $170.7 million — Chicago
2001 — 11 — $170.7 million — A Beautiful Mind
2000 — 4 — $187.7 million — Gladiator
1999 — 13 — $130.1 million — American Beauty
1998 — 18 — $100.3 million — Shakespeare in Love
1997 — 1 — $600.8 million — Titanic
1996 — 19 — $78.7 million — The English Patient
1995 — 18 — $75.6 million — Braveheart
1994 — 1 — $329.7 million — Forrest Gump
1993 — 9 — $96.1 million — Schindler’s List
1992 — 11 — $101.2 million — Unforgiven
1991 — 4 — $130.7 million — Silence of the Lambs
1990 — 3 — $184.2 million — Dances with Wolves
1989 — 8 — $106.6 million — Driving Miss Daisy
1988 — 1 — $172.8 million — Rain Man
1987 — 25 — $44.0 million — The Last Emperor
1986 — 3 — $138.5 million — Platoon
1985 — 5 — $87.1 million — Out of Africa
1984 — 12 — $52.0 million — Amadeus
1983 — 2 — $108.4 million — Terms of Endearment
1982 — 12 — $52.8 million — Gandhi
1981 — 7 — $59.0 million — Chariots of Fire
1980 — 11 — $54.8 million — Ordinary People
1979 — xx — $106.3 million — Kramer Vs. Kramer
1978 — xx — $49.0 million — The Deer Hunter
1977 — xx — $38.3 million — Annie Hall
1976 — xx — $117.2 million — Rocky
1975 — xx — $109.0 million — One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1974 — xx — $47.5 million — The Godfather Part II
1973 — xx — $156.0 million — The Sting
1972 — xx — $133.7 million — The Godfather
1971 — xx — $51.7 million — The French Connection
1970 — xx — $61.7 million — Patton
March 11 update: Updated to include the winner for 2023.