What it actually costs to win an Oscar
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does it really cost to win an Oscar?
0:03–0:53
2
How do Oscar campaigns compare in budget and strategy?
0:53–1:49
3
Who are the Academy voters and how do they impact the Oscars?
1:49–3:00
4
What role does marketing play in winning an Oscar?
3:00–3:59
5
How has the Oscar voting process changed over the years?
3:59–5:01
6
What are the historical influences on Oscar campaigning?
5:01–5:46
7
Who are the frontrunners for this year's Oscars?
5:46–7:08
8
What makes the Oscars relevant in today's film industry?
7:08–28:54
Speakers
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