‘The most important business juggernaut ever’: Why the Oscars peaked in 1998

As exceptional as Titanic was, though, it was part of a significant broader pattern: many of the 20th Century’s best picture winners were also some of the most profitable films of their respective years. “From 1927 to 1976, roughly 90% of Oscars for best picture were awarded to films that were also in the top 10 grossing pictures for their year,” wrote film historian Gene Del Vecchio in The Huffington Post in 2014. “Academy voters and the public alike enjoyed serious romance 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.”

There was a shift in 1978, Del Vecchio argues, when Star Wars was a box-office behemoth, while Woody Allen’s far smaller Annie Hall triumphed at the Oscars. 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 made close to $425m (equivalent to $1bn or £740m today) around the world. In 1996, Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump made $678m (equivalent to $1.4bn or £1bn today). This could be why so many people watched the Academy Award ceremony: they actually cared about the films that were nominated.

The big post-millennial shift

Nowadays… not so much. In the ’90s, the global box office for all of the best picture winners combined was nearly $5bn, whereas in the 2010s, that figure had dropped to $2bn. While we’re looking at stats, it’s worth noting that, in the 1990s, many Oscar winners didn’t just make a fortune, but they cost a fortune to make. The average budget for a best picture winner in that decade was $50m. In the 2010s, the average had fallen to $20m.

The 2009-2012 best picture winners – Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech and The Artist – all cost around $15m. And when in 2010 the best picture prize went to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker – budget $15m, gross $50m (equivalent to $73m or £54m today) – rather than her ex-husband’s Avatar – budget $237m, gross almost $3bn (equivalent to $4.3bn or £3.2bn today) – the writing was on the wall. The Oscars were no longer about expensive mainstream hits – and the ceremony no longer attracted expansive mainstream audiences. Last year’s winner, Anora, had a budget of just $6m and a global gross of $58m. When the budgets and the box-office takings of best picture winners diminish, it seems, the ceremony’s viewing figures diminish, too.