Okay, so now we know who’ll be walking the red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre on Feb. 25. Yay. But a bigger — and, for the folks at the Academy and ABC, truly troubling — question looms: Will anybody be watching them strut their stuff?
Thanks to a bleak, simmering brew of low-buzz indie-film nominees, sluggish box office revenues, a zillion cable channels, and general apathy, viewer interest in the Oscars has waned in the years since 55.2 million people in the U.S. watched Titanic‘s 1998 sweep. In fact, since 2000, no Academy Awards telecast has come within 10 million viewers of that sum; last year’s 38.9 million was the second-lowest total of the past decade. And that was with the perennially-popular Jon Stewart hosting. The Academy and ABC have taken the hint, amping up their advertising efforts to elevate interest, reports The New York Times. Seems they’ve finally learned that the Oscar brand isn’t enough to get people to watch the show — we homebodies have to be convinced.
addCredit(“Letters from Iwo Jima: Merie W. Wallace”)
Still, doofy commercials featuring Ellen DeGeneres (this year’shost) in full movie-usher regalia can be successful only to a point.More important in getting folks to flip from G4 over to ABC are thenominees themselves. Because folks certainly would rather watch moviesthey’ve seen and enjoyed (say, Titanic or Return of the King) compete for the littlegolden guys than films they’ve never heard of. And this year’s crop is,on this point, dubious. As of today, the combined domestic gross ofthis year’s five Best Picture contenders is a mere $244 million. That’sit. Hell, a Lord of the Rings movie could practically earn that much on a Sunday afternoon before tea time. And half of that comes from The Departed‘s $122 milion gross. Otherwise, we’re talking about three films from studios’ specialty labels and one, Letters From Iwo Jima (pictured), that’s in a foreign language — none of which have crossed the $60 million barrier.
Now, I’m not saying that these movies are bad or unworthy of theiraccolades, and it’s worth noting that Oscar nods themselves will boost box officebucks. But when you consider that the total gross of all of last year’sBest Picture nominees was just $245 million, and you then consider howpoorly rated that show was, well, it’s looking like I could be the onlyone watching on Oscar night. Will you tune in with me?
I hope they get all the Dreamgirls songs sung by the films stars!!!
I’ll be there, if only to see Martin Scorsese (FINALLY) win his well-deserved Oscar. And if The Departed could win Best Picture on top of that, well, then it’ll be worth sitting through the three-plus hour extravaganza.
What Hollywood has to realize is that there are too many freaking award shows honoring the same actors and movies, so why should the public bother to tune in? We already pretty much know the outcome and any surprises will end up on youtube the next day. They have to find ways to get the big stars to attend the awards show even if they’re not nominated. I was really hoping for Brad Pitt to get a nomination for Babel but alas it wasn’t to be. He and Angelina were the main reasons I tuned into the Golden Globes and watched the entire thing. The Academy should really do more to encourage the Pitt, Jolie, Kidman, Halle, Charlize, and even Tom “batsh*t” crazy” Cruise, etc. to show up.
Wow…this is scary, you seem to be more worried about how much money these films have made, rather than the quality of the pictures nominated. Just because it doesn’t make 100 million +, doesn’t mean it is not good. Typical of an audience that doesn’t want to be intellectually stimulated, and would rather have flashy special effects to please them. (I am only going by the films you mentioned yourself.) It seems that you are on the side of popular equals better, even if you did say that you don’t think these are bad movies. I think that this might be the worst commentary on movie going or Oscar buzz I have ever read. I am all for opinions, don’t get me wrong, but I am a little discouraged to be reading this here. This is EW afterall.
The problem I have with The Departed is that the ending had a sloppy domino effect of shooting off every person and then Marky Mark takes the cheese. I wish that LMS would win but realisticly either Babel or LFIJ are probably going to win.
I’ll watch the show, as I do every year, but nobody should expect spectacular ratings–Oscar may be a popularity contest, but it’s ostensibly a socially relevant one, so you rarely see a slew of ratings-boosting blockbusters vying for the top spots–nor should we, this isn’t the People’s Choice awards.
I have to admit, after I read the nominations, I kind of thought, booooring. Good movies, sure, but not good television. And I don’t know why they asked Ellen Degeneres to host. She’s been terrible and reeeeally unentertaining at the other things she’s hosted. Why not Conan O’Brien? Or Jon Stewart again?
Probably not watching if it’s on a Monday or Wed, because I work…but probably wouldn’t watch anyway because none of those movies interest me – except the Departed and Dreamgirls. Saw LMS and I’m like – wtf? is great about that movie? Do I have to see it AGAIN to GET WHY THEY NOM’D THAT MOVIE? No way!
So I’ll be in bed, or watching whatever is on the opposite channel…and I predict most of America will stay away too. You know, there’s no Titanic, no LOTR, these are all small nobody-saw-them type movies. Maybe the world will watch. And who knows who these Asian & Latino actors/actresses are? Never heard of them and probably won’t see them again in LIFE.
To Blair – Joshua Rich wasn’t saying gross = good, he was simply pointing out that a low gross means not many people have seen these movies, which means not many people will be interested in seeing whether or not they win Oscars. It’s a good and valid point.
This was a great year for film! I’ll be ready come Oscar night for the whoe shebang.
The Oscar’s are for flim quality not film grosses. Dreamgirls was a good movie, and it may have been nominated in a different year; but with Babal, Pan’s Laybrinth, Children of Men, The Departed, etc it just wasn’t the best of the year.
I have a totally different take on the situation…I think the nominations were great picks!
Part of why I don’t spend 3-4 hours watching award shows is that I subscribe to EW. You give me a run down of everything. If anything particularly amusing happens, I can look it up on YouTube.
The folks at EW are qvetching about this only because their precious Dreamgirls did not get nominated for best film. All five selections were sound ones (even Babel, which was the only one I initially questioned); certainly more so than the horrendous trainwreck that is Dreamgirls.
Last year everyone was sure ‘Brokeback Mountain’ would win the gold. But Crash took it.
I think this year ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ could be the suprise win. It has a great ensemble cast performance. So maybe Little Miss Sunshine could have a little oscar gold.
I’ll be watching like I do every year. The Oscars are to me like the Superbowl is to many other people: it’s fun to dissect the nominees, it’s fun to make predictions, and regardless of who wins it’ll be entertaining. I love the montages, the hosts (most of the time,) making fun of actors struggling through bad awards show banter, the song performances, making fun of horrendous outfits, drooling over the pretty dresses, and cheering on my favorites. The movie industry is changing and we rarely have huge blockbusters anymor. And there’s so many smaller high-quality films that the few blockbusters we do have rarely ever hog all the nominations. It’s been a great year for film I think, although I’ll admit I am lucky because I live in a major city and am able to see most of the nominated movies.
Why is Letters in the Best Pic category and not best Foreign Language film or something? The whole movie’s in Japanese!