Oscar winners slipping at the box office — 2022
Oscar winners slipping at the box office — 2022
Is the Academy ready to give Best Picture to a theatrical success again?
Previous posts: 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017
For most of the Academy’s history, the award for Best Picture went 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 in the year of its release. In fact, Crash, which grossed only $54.6 million, ranked way, way down at #49.
For the next several years, the Oscar for Best Picture alternated between relatively big hits and somewhat smaller box-office performers—but for nearly a decade now, the award has consistently gone to films that were outside the Top 35 if not the Top 60, and last year 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+.
So, is that the new normal now? Will Best Picture go to another small film this year?
Well, we’ll see. This year’s nominees include two of the highest-grossing films of all time—Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick—but neither of those films is favoured to win, and the front-runners right now, based on their success with the guilds and other awards-giving bodies, seem to be Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Banshees of Inisherin. The former film was very successful for an indie—it currently ranks #26 for the year, and it has grossed more than any Best Picture winner of the past ten years except for Green Book—while the latter film was one of the many movies for grown-ups that failed to find an audience in theatres this year.
As ever, we shall see. For now, here are the nominees, with their grosses and box-office rankings for the year as of the day they were nominated (i.e. January 24):
Top Gun: Maverick — $718,732,821 — 1st
Avatar: The Way of Water — $598,409,459 — 2nd
Elvis — $151,040,048 — 11th
Everything Everywhere All at Once — $70,008,593 — 26th
The Fabelmans — $14,985,415 — 58th
The Banshees of Inisherin — $9,401,650 — 76th
Tar — $5,926,705 — 88th
Triangle of Sadness — $4,216,348 — 99th
Women Talking — $1,121,910 — 142nd
All Quiet on the Western Front — 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 12:
2022 — 26 — $73.8 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 14 update: Updated to include the winner for 2022.
And if the film in question—Everything Everywhere All at Once—grossed just another $78,646, it would be the first Best Picture winner since Argo to be in the Top 25 for its year. The film has been back in theatres since shortly after the Oscar nominations were announced, so there is a very good chance it will cross that line.