Movie posters for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are pictured outdoors the Cinemark Somerdale 16 and XD in Somerdale, New Jersey, in 2023.
Hannah Beier | The Washington Post | Getty Images
“Barbenheimer” strikes once more.
It’s no shock that Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” and Universal’s “Oppenheimer” have been amongst the 10 best-picture nominees introduced Tuesday for this yr’s Academy Awards ceremony. The duo exploded into cinemas in July, producing massive box-office bucks and enchanting critics and audiences alike.
Helmed by academy darlings Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, respectively, the dichotomous movies have been on Oscar prediction lists for months. Although Gerwig missed out on a greatest director nomination, each filmmakers obtained nods for their screenplays.
Altogether, “Oppenheimer” led the pack with 13 nominations, whereas “Barbie” tallied eight.
Best Picture nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards
- “American Fiction” (MGM/Amazon)
- “Anatomy of a Fall” (Neon)
- “Barbie” (Warner Bros. Discovery)
- “The Holdovers” (Focus Features)
- “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Apple Original Films/Paramount)
- “Maestro” (Netflix)
- “Oppenheimer” (Universal)
- “Past Lives” (A24)
- “Poor Things” (Searchlight Pictures)
- “The Zone of Interest” (A24)
The tag-team of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” additionally represented 88% of the cumulative box-office haul generated by greatest image nominees previous to their nomination, in accordance with information from Comscore.
The 10 greatest image movies collectively tallied $1.09 billion at the home field workplace forward of Tuesday’s announcement, the fifth-highest haul for the slate of nominees since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started nominating 10 titles for the prime award in 2009.
“Barbenheimer” accounted for $963.1 million of this yr’s determine.
Read extra: ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Poor Things’ lead the Oscars nomination pack — See the full list
Last yr, the 10 best-picture nominees generated $1.57 billion at the home field workplace earlier than their nominations, the highest-grossing class of nominees on report. The 2023 movies benefited from $718 million in ticket gross sales from Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and practically $600 million in receipts from Disney and twentieth Century’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
The box-office assortment from nominated photos can fluctuate tremendously from yr to yr, relying on which movies make the reduce.
“Best image Oscar nominees are ostensibly chosen primarily based on their creative and filmmaking excellence and never their field workplace revenues,” mentioned Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Thus there are some years the place the cumulative theatrical revenues for the movies in rivalry will not be reflective of their sheer recognition amongst moviegoers.”
In some years, nominated movies have been launched later in the yr, that means they acquire smaller box-office receipts previous to getting a nod from the academy. Traditionally, Oscar-bait movies are launched in the final quarter of the yr, with the majority hitting cinemas in November and December.
For this yr’s nominees, solely three best-picture nominees arrived in theaters throughout that point — Searchlight’s “Poor Things,” MGM and Amazon’s “American Fiction” and A24’s “The Zone of Interest.” Together these three options generated lower than $30 million at the home field workplace forward of Tuesday’s announcement.
Additionally, nominated movies from Netflix don’t rely towards the box-office haul, as the streaming studio doesn’t report what it makes from its restricted theatrical runs. This yr Netflix had just one greatest image nominee, “Maestro.”
According to Dergarabedian, these box-office {dollars} might translate to greater viewership for the Oscars awards ceremony on March 10.
“Thanks to ‘Barbenheimer,’ this yr, as we additionally noticed in 2023, the mixed field workplace of the greatest image nominees pre-nomination is in extra of $1 billion in home income,” he mentioned. “This is the dream state of affairs for the telecast and film followers for whom the attract of rooting for their favourite movie makes viewership extra important and in flip a presumed scores increase for the community.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the mum or dad firm of NBCUniversal and CNBC.