LOS ANGELES – Winning an Oscar is
supposed to be the ultimate career game changer for an actor, after
which studios will be breaking down your door with offer after offer.
But does an Academy Award really mean more plum roles? In fact, do
you even remember who won Best Supporting Actor last year? Or Best
Actress the year before?
“The reality for me is that I thought my phone would be ringing a
lot, and it wasn’t,” Octavia Spencer, who took the statue in 2012 for
Best Supporting Actress in "The Help," said in an interview with Vulture
last year. “My phone wasn’t ringing off the hook; I didn’t feel like
anything was changing.”
And yet from January through March, Spencer was the apple of the
entertainment industry’s eye, collecting honors on a weekly basis, just
like Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Chastain have been
this year.
And plum roles aside, Oscar attention doesn't necessarily mean more money, either.
“An Oscar does not guarantee more money. That depends on their box
office performance and what they’re worth in the foreign marketplace,”
Hollywood producer Mark Pennell of Beacon Pictures, told FOX411’s Pop
Tarts column. “Russell Crowe was making around $10 million a movie
directly after his award [for 'Gladiator']. Because his films have not
performed well, he now makes closer to $2 million. An Oscar could help
with better roles and these roles may deliver box office success. But it
is this box office success that leads to more money.”
On Oscar also doesn’t guarantee audiences will flock to theaters to see what you follow it up with.
Take Reese Witherspoon, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 2006 for
her portrayal of June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line.” Witherspoon’s
post-Oscar movies have mostly been box office flops – from “Rendition”
and “How Do You Know” to “Penelope” and “Water For Elephants” – landing
the star on Forbes’s Most Overpaid Actors list. Then there is Cuba
Gooding Jr., who in 1996 won the Supporting Actor Oscar for “Jerry
Maguire” was considered one of the most promising rising stars, but in
the ensuing years took on roles that were slaughtered by critics, from
“Instinct” and “Murder of Crows,” to “Boat Trip” and “Shadowboxer.”
“That’s the downside, the high expectations that you will repeat your
performance,” explained Rob Stone, President of Licensing at Excel
Branding. “And as it pertains to licensing, it really doesn’t matter.
Clearly within the world of movies it is huge to be the winner as it
validates you as one of the elite few. But as far as licensing goes,
it’s a band-aid effect.”
But Oscar has a guaranteed impact for at least one interested party: the movie studios.
A Best Picture Oscar nomination alone leads to a big bump at the box
office. The nominated “Zero Dark Thirty” opened to a limited release in
December, but after scoring five nominations it expanded that very
weekend and grossed an impressive $24 million domestically. Tom Hooper’s
classic adaptation on the musical “Les Misérables” brought in a further
$10.1 million te weekend following its nominations, and the bottom line
of “Lincoln” was boosted a further $6.3 million.
Plus a recent report by Randy Nelson, professor of economics and
finance at Colby College, found that Oscar-nominated movies remain in
theaters about twice as long as their non-nominated counterparts, and on
average, a Best Picture win lifts its sales by around $18 million.
And the money doesn’t stop there. Edmund Helmer, founder of
BoxOfficeQuant.com – a site that uses statistical data to examine
financial issues within the film industry – pointed out that the words
“Academy Award” can then be stamped and advertised on every copy of the
DVD.
“So even if we consumers don’t remember the wins, we’re reminded
whenever we make a purchasing decision,” he said. “Oscar nominations can
take relatively obscure films and elevate them into mainstream
awareness, which has a huge impact.
WASHINGTON:
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged lawmakers to agree on an
immigration reform bill that would offer undocumented migrants a pathway
to citizenship within the next few months.
