(Oscar) Prestige does not a profit make.
The Oscar wins came out at the end of February, and social media is still abuzz discussing (some of) the results. But how does this extra attention from the mysterious Academy translate into profits?
The Oscars aren’t the only awards in the modern market, and the movies that make it to the Oscar roster top the lists at several international film shows. Many are former independents, like Juno, that first reached audiences at what has become the draft lottery of future studio releases, the Sundance Film Festival. These are the award films, those moving pictures made to move the motivated audience. More and more, these are the films that make it to the ceremonies, the Pulitzers in the ever-expanding world of motion pictures.
What about the crowd-pleasers, the gems of popular genre? The Fool’s Gold of our modern cinematic landscape, movies made to sell dvds following a mediocre theater run. These (relatively) cheap and charming money-makers are the bread and butter of the movie industry. Then there are the action-filled spectacles-films designed to attract an audience to the big screen, as with the colourful and grimly vibrant (punny, aren’t I) Sweeney Todd.
Tracking movies online separates the one-hit-wonders and the fluff from the cult classics. Some movies are designed to sustain long term sales, not only of the film itself but the cultural icons, the books, scripts, the “making of”, photos, posters, T-shirts, newspapers, back-packs, pins, journals, re-packaged “special” dvds…These are the movies that today make an actor or a director a deity in the pop culture parthenon. Movies that make it into this category attract not just long-term attention, but permanent adulation.
And the film this year with top billing in the Buzz is…
