By Joanna Piacenza
With last year’s Oscars telecast drawing its smallest audience to date at 26.5 million viewers, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been casting about for ways to bring in a larger audience that have all backfired, from adding a popular film category to hiring a well-known comedian as host to shortening its broadcast.
And in its attempts to make itself more attractive, the Academy has generated a slew of negative headlines that threaten to overshadow the actual broadcast.
In response to the Academy’s decision to award four categories during commercial breaks to shorten the Oscar broadcast, more than 450 actors, directors and cinematographers — including Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Halle Berry — signed an open letter in protest.
The Academy quickly reversed course and announced on Friday that all awards will be presented during the broadcast.
That uproar came after comedian Kevin Hart withdrew from hosting duties due to controversy over his past homophobic tweets. For the first time in 30 years, the Oscars will go hostless.
And that controversy was on top of what is turning into an annual critique of the Oscars’ lack of female director nominees and dearth of ethnic minorities in the acting nominations.
But no matter how much public criticism is heaped upon the Oscars, entertainment industry experts say the awards will always remain the gold standard in Hollywood, serving as a mark of excellence that has the power to make or break celebrities’ careers and boost box office returns. Last year’s Best Picture winner “Shape of Water” saw a 241 percent increase in ticket sales post-nominations announcement, according to Fandango Inc., and its fellow nominees saw jumps as well.
A new Morning Consult/The Hollywood Reporter poll asked the public for their choices for the top Oscars. Respondents of the Jan. 24-27 survey could watch the trailer featuring each nominated film, actor or director. (The 2,201-person poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.)
Box office hits “Black Panther” and “A Star is Born” are big winners in the poll. Keep scrolling to see who else earned America’s vote, as well as who would win a hypothetical Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category.
Oscar Winners
Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther” is the only superhero movie ever to earn a coveted Academy Award nomination for Best Picture — and audiences want to see it take home the trophy.
The film was also 2018’s most lucrative film, grossing more than $700 million stateside — making it the most successful February box office opening of all time.
“It’s to the Academy’s advantage to have a popular film be popular at the Oscars,” said Jonathan Kuntz, a lecturer at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, given the telecast’s steadily dropping viewership numbers. “Black Panther” is the kind of a film will make people tune in, he and others said — but it’s unlikely to win on Sunday.
Netflix Inc.’s “Roma,” arguably the most accessible film on the list because of the streaming service’s 139 million paying subscribers, garnered the least support — which experts say is due to the Spanish-only dialogue and its black-and-white motif.
In Morning Consult’s Grammy poll, the public voted for the hit song “Shallow” from the “A Star is Born” soundtrack to win a Grammy this year for Record of the Year and Song of the Year (it won neither). In the Oscars poll, they’re also favoring the film in every category for which it was nominated, including director Bradley Cooper’s role as co-lead Jackson Maine.
Cooper and Lady Gaga are slated to perform “Shallow,” the song that ties in with Cooper’s directorial debut together, at this year’s broadcast, a move many are saying will draw in much-needed viewership.
Bale won this year’s Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for his role as former Vice President Dick Cheney in “Vice.”
First-time Best Actress in a Leading Role nominee Lady Gaga won this category by a long shot among the general public, a full 22 points ahead of her next competitor.
Hollywood, however, isn’t as eager to crown the singer as an award-winning actress just yet: Gaga lost the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award to Glenn Close this year.
Gaga has won several accolades this awards season for “Shallow.” Gaga has previously been nominated for the Oscars’ Best Song category in 2016 with “Til It Happens to You,” a song she co-wrote, produced and performed for the 2015 documentary on campus rape “The Hunting Ground.”
Again, fan favorite “A Star is Born” won among adults. Experts noted that like “Black Panther,” its presence in the awards show could attract a larger audience.
This is Elliott’s first Academy Award nomination in more than 50 years of acting. Ali won this year’s Golden Globe for Actor in a Supporting Role.
The Academy is known for nominating artistic films that aren’t necessarily box office hits. “The Favourite” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” are among the lowest-earning films featured at the Oscars this year, but they brought in more than two-thirds of the public’s vote for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
King won this year’s Golden Globe for Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.
If the public gets its way, Lee will become the first black filmmaker to win for Best Directing. Five other black men have been nominated for the award since John Singleton’s nod in 1992 for “Boyz in the Hood.” (Singleton was also the youngest category nominee at age 24).
The Academy gave Lee an Honorary Academy Award in 2016 for his body of work, but he has never won a competitive Oscar.
2018 was a banner year for black directors, according to a 2019 USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism report: Sixteen black directors worked on the 100 top-grossing films of the year, compared to six in 2017.
Just five women have been nominated for Best Directing in the 91-year history of the Academy. That looks a little like this, if women are filled-in dots and men are empty dots.
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Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to win an Academy Award for directing, winning for the 2009 film “The Hurt Locker.”
None of the directing nominees in the Academy’s 91-year history have been women of color.
Fan favorite “The Incredibles” is another Pixar-Disney joint film: Since the Academy began presenting an award for a Best Animated Feature Film in 2002, the production-distribution powerhouse of Pixar Inc. and Walt Disney Pictures has snatched up the award 10 times, with winners such as “Finding Nemo” and “Toy Story 3.”
Three of the five nominees were among the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year. “Incredibles 2” is 2018’s third-most lucrative film, bringing in more than $605 million in the domestic box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
The Academy announced in August that it would implement a series of changes to the Oscars broadcast, including a new category: Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film. Less than a month later, amid industry criticism over several aspects of the new move — including its lack of criteria for nomination and unclear voting process — the Academy tabled the new category, saying it “merits further study.”
“The idea behind it was a good one: The Academy was trying to change with the time and change with the audience,” said Kuntz.
The Academy was also riding the “Black Panther” crest of early 2018, Kuntz said, noting that the creation of a Popular Film category ensured that the superhero film would have a place in the show. But in many ways, “Black Panther” made the popular film category irrelevant because the film was that good, Kuntz said.
The category’s brief life prompts the question of which film would have won if the Academy hadn’t killed the category. Morning Consult asked respondents to crown one of the top 20 highest-grossing films of 2018 as a hypothetical winner.
Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures won big as the producers and distributors of not only the two most lucrative films of the year, but the two most loved.
“Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War” were Nos. 1 and 2 respectively in box office earnings in 2018, taking in over $700 million and $678.8 million domestically, per Box Office Mojo. And they earned the most enthusiasm as flicks that should win Best Popular Film (12 percent and 10 percent of the vote), although “A Star is Born” also garnered 10 percent of the vote.
Popular Film Winners
“Black Panther” was unique as a film because “it was something we hadn’t seen before in a genre we’d seen so much of,” said Jeff Bock, a senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Experts attributed some of the film’s success to breakthrough diversity and inclusion, but said it was largely a triumph because it was simply a beautiful film.
And the domination of the superhero genre will only continue, said Bock, even with Marvel Cinematic Universe’s conclusion to its current phase of superhero films, “Avengers: Endgame,” coming to theaters this April.
After several flops, DC Comics Inc. has “course corrected” and seen success after modeling itself more after Marvel, Bock said, fusing action with a bit of humor. “Aquaman,” which was released Dec. 21, has brought in $329 million domestically so far and more than $1 billion worldwide.
Men were more enthusiastic about “Avengers: Infinity War” earning the hypothetical Best Popular Film award.
Although men have made up the vast majority of leads and co-leads in top films over the past decade, per a research brief from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released Feb. 12, a Motion Picture Association of America report released in April 2018 found that men and women made up roughly proportionate shares of moviegoers and ticket purchasers.
That said, the share of female leads in each year’s 100 top films jumped to 40 percent in 2018, according to Annenberg, its highest number since the program started charting the data in 2007.
Women’s rankings on who should win the “popular Oscar” were fairly similar to those of male moviegoers, although they were twice as likely to vote for the romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians.” The film brought in nearly $175 million in the domestic box office, making it the 17th most-lucrative film of the year.
“The industry is reacting to a more diverse audience,” said Bock, which is seen in the level of diversity in film leads and narratives this year, including the all-Asian cast of “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Democrats couldn’t get enough of “Black Panther.”
The film’s success was driven by black moviegoers, per a Bloomberg analysis: The film performed best in 10 cities such as Atlanta that have large shares of black residents. African-Americans make up a disproportionately low share of moviegoers.
Ten percent of frequent moviegoers in 2017 were black according to the MPAA’s latest report, but they make up 13.4 percent of the population per the U.S. Census Bureau.
Black adults make up 25 percent of the Democratic Party, according to Morning Consult data.
Although white adults make up a majority (61 percent) of the U.S. population, they bought a smaller share (55 percent) of tickets in 2017, with that share dropping somewhat steadily since 2012.
Republicans, on the other hand, ranked “Black Panther” lower. Just 4 percent said the film should win Best Popular Film, tying it for fourth. (“Avengers: Infinity War,” “A Star is Born” and “Venom” won among members of the GOP.)
Notably, Republicans are as likely to say there should be more white superheroes as they are to say there should be more black superheroes. And while 54 percent of U.S. adults have a favorable view of “Black Panther” protagonist T’Challa, that figure drops 11 points among Republicans.