Movie Monday: The X’s & O’s of “The Oscar Effect”- it’s alive and working

A lot of people say: “Who cares about the Oscars.”

I can’t blame them. If I remember to tune to into The Academy Awards broadcast, I do. If I don’t, I don’t lose any sleep. Also, I’ve been really disappointed in some Oscar winning movies over the years. I’ve hated them. Yet these movies win all the awards and leave other GREAT movies (at least in my opinion) without even a nomination.

That being said- there’s this thing that happens to movies that win. Whether we think it makes a difference to us or not, it does! Numbers don’t lie. And you know I love a good chart.

This is the Box Office Mojo Weekend Breakdown from over this past weekend (March 7th-9th) and I’ve marked up the parts to really focus on:

After the independent film Anora won Best Picture at the Oscars on March 2nd, it was released into more theaters. Just because it was available in more places wouldn’t necessarily mean that people would automatically go to the theater to see it (especially knowing that they could wait just a few weeks and it’ll be available to stream from home, March 17th on Hulu).

But people did go see it in theaters! A lot of people did. So many people, in fact, that Anora jumped up into the Top 10 in box office earnings from this past weekend. You can see where it was #22 last weekend before winning The Best Picture Oscar. Then it won all the different Oscars and then Anora jumped up to #7 this weekend in box office revenue. It made a 595.3% jump. You can see for yourself in the chart where every other single movie fell (except for the new releases, obviously since they are new).

Also- in kind of a surprise twist, Oscar winning actors and actresses may live longer than those who don’t win any acting awards. Numerous studies over the past 20 years have found that Academy Award winning actors, on average, live more than three years longer than actors who were merely nominated for a prize. If you want to read more about those studies- CLICK HERE.

So as much as we want to roll our eyes at the different award shows, especially The Oscars, they do have this weird effect.

Want to contact Laura McKenna about a movie you recently watched at home or in the theaters? Email anytime, she’d love to hear from you: Laura.McKenna@civicmedia.us
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