Chapter 1: What does it really cost to win an Oscar?
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Sam Sanders in for Shumita Basu. Today, how the Oscars actually work and why we still love them anyway. At last year's Oscars, a small independent film called Anora won Best Picture. On stage, producer Alex Coco underscored just how small that film's budget was, compared to a lot of other nominees.
Thank you guys so much. Thank you to the Academy. We made this movie for $6 million.
What Coco didn't mention is how much more money the Anora team spent to win its Oscars. Behind the scenes, the marketing, distribution, and awards campaign for Onora reportedly cost around $18 million.
Chapter 2: How do Oscar campaigns compare in budget and strategy?
That's almost three times the film's production budget. Awards season isn't just about making the art. It's about strategy, months of screenings, Q&As, festival stops, for-your-consideration ads, private receptions. And this is all aimed at a relatively small group of people, the roughly 11,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Turns out, Onora's price tag is not that unusual.
Just the size of award season, the way that the Academy voters are now spread around the world, the amount of events and festivals and tastemaker screenings and smaller award ceremonies. You got to get your people in as many locations as possible.
That's Katie Rich. She's been covering the entertainment industry and the Oscars for years. She's the awards editor at The Ankler, an entertainment business newsletter, and she hosts the podcast Prestige Junkie.
Chapter 3: Who are the Academy voters and how do they impact the Oscars?
With the Oscars coming up on March 15th, I sat down with Katie to break down how these campaigns work, what she makes of this year's nominees, and why the Oscars, regardless of what we think of them, probably aren't going anywhere. You know, I call this award season because like it's very long. It is a season with like beats and moments and a whole arc for these movies. It is massive.
It is expensive. And I want to try and unpack what that Oscar industrial complex, what it's made of. It feels eerily similar to a political campaign. And a thing that everyone talks about in that world is like, how much did you have to spend to get one vote? Same question to you for the Oscars. Let's math it. If Nora spent $18 million to win Best Picture.
What's that cost per vote? So, OK, so you've got like 11,000 members roughly. So you imagine and it has to get more than 50 percent. So there's a whole ballot process. Let's say so that's 6,000 votes divided by 18 million dollars.
How many zeros are a million? 18 million divided by 6,000? 6,000.
Sure.
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Chapter 4: What role does marketing play in winning an Oscar?
This is very back of the envelope math. $3,000 a vote? But it also won Best Actress. It also won Best Director. So that's a lot of, you know, the value it continues to add. That's wild.
So let's dig in a little more on who these Academy voters are. Every year there is chatter about who these people are and whether they are the best representation for the film going public or for the film industry. I remember the Oscars So White controversy from, gosh, almost a decade ago. That led to a widen of the ranks, to a diversification of the ranks.
Right now, if you had to describe it, what is this body? How big is it? Who are they? And it's more than what it was, right?
Yeah. The Oscars, maybe even 10 years ago, had about half as many members as it does now. The Academy, about 6,000 people. It's now around 11,000. And every year they invite a new class of people to join the Academy. So they add to it every year.
Chapter 5: How has the Oscar voting process changed over the years?
Add to it every year. And the ones who have been there forever, they don't have to leave until they're dead.
No, you're in it. You're in it for life. There are rules about how to stay an active voter. There are people who are moved into emeritus status if they haven't worked in the industry long enough or haven't.
There's a lot of folks right now because there's no job.
I think they make it so that if you're like active and participating that you can stick around. They don't want to kick you off the rolls. But there certainly had been an issue. Around the Oscars, a white era of people who hadn't worked in the industry in decades might have retired to God knows where, but we're still voting.
And so they're trying to make it representative of people who are working in the global film industry. So they are way more internationally spread than they used to be.
20 percent are international, correct?
Yeah, it's something like that. Yeah.
If you're having events trying to get as many votes as you can, you have to go find these international voters where they are.
Absolutely. They have a lot of more things in London. The BAFTA Awards are a huge stop for that or the London Film Festival because these Oscar campaigns, especially to get nominations, which we can talk about how that works, like it really can come down to just a couple dozen votes.
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Chapter 6: What are the historical influences on Oscar campaigning?
Well, this is what's so crazy. All of the writing about how these campaign seasons work. The margins are so small. Sometimes you're looking for less than 200 votes or a few dozen. Yeah. And you mentioned the process to nominate. It is different from the process to vote for the final films that win. And that kind of dictates the level of focus and how that happens, too, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So you've got, I think, 19 branches of the Academy. And that's art directors, casting, actors is one of the biggest ones. It's over a thousand people. Costume designers, I think, is only a couple hundred people. And, you know, depending on the size of the branches, it really can just be a small group that you need to sway things in your favor.
Because the branch sets a nomination.
Yeah. So each branch votes for the winners in their own category. And then everyone votes for Best Picture. So the Best Picture thing, everyone gets a say.
Chapter 7: Who are the frontrunners for this year's Oscars?
But costume designers, only costume designers get to pick the costume nominees. So like this year, Deborah L. Scott got nominated for Avatar, which was a real surprise for a lot of people. Can we pause?
I thought that film was all CGI.
It is. But she makes these real costumes for them to then scan digitally. And I did an event with them, actually, and they had the costumes on display and you see this incredible detail. And so because the costume branch is kind of small, they were able to bring these people to these events to show them the costumes to kind of have that one-on-one access.
And she got the nomination, which she really deserved. But I don't think the broader Academy would have known that the work she did qualified like that.
Yeah. You know, these screenings that these films are holding to get Academy voters to watch the films, they're not just screenings. Vanity Fair covered this extensively. There was an elaborate Victorian-style fair complete with hot air balloons when Amazon was pushing the aeronauts. Sounds about right. When Billie Eilish wanted her theme from a James Bond movie to win.
They sent signed sheet music that Billie signed herself. What is the most epic Oscar season screening you've ever seen?
Yeah, I mean, I think the spectacle can vary depending on who's doing it. Netflix can often be known for their level of spectacle.
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Chapter 8: What makes the Oscars relevant in today's film industry?
There are also really strict rules about when you're allowed to feed people, what kind of party you're allowed to have. So I'm thinking about, like, Netflix premiered Jake Kelly at the New York Film Festival in September. Jake Kelly, yeah. Haven't heard that film name in a few weeks, months. Back from the dead. I mean, Netflix famously spends a lot of money on these things.
And I think this wasn't even an official campaign event, but they had an after party for the New York Film Festival premiere at the Polo Lounge in New York. You know, the very fancy underground, like Ralph Lauren. Yeah, it's really hard to get into unless Netflix is getting you in. That's not crazy. That's not hot air balloons.
But that kind of tells you, like, leverage access, do something that people want to show up for, and you will get the attention that you want.
I mean, just recently, the Academy announced that Academy voters actually have to watch the films that they vote on. I know. Please explain this to me, Katie Rich.
I mean, it's always been an assumed thing, right? Like, you're supposed to only vote for something that you actually watch. But now, basically, they just set up a system in the ballot where you have to click a button that says, yes, I saw this. Oh, that's all? Like, scouts honor? It's an honor system. I don't know how they could do it otherwise.
Because Hollywood's so honorable.
What? Well, back in the day, you used to be able to keep track of attendance at screenings, and certainly they still do. You know, if you ask the people running these campaigns, they have a spreadsheet. They are keeping track of who has seen stuff where.
But if they're watching it on the, you know, the portal that, you know, the Academy members have access to this app where they can see everything, it's incredible. I'm so jealous of it. So they can sort of see if it's there, but what if they saw it at a festival? What if they wouldn't watch it at their friend's house? What if they bought a ticket and saw it at AMC?
It just kind of falls apart after a while. So I unfortunately don't think we'll ever know actually how many people watch the movies.
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