Okay. So I have a mild curiosity as to the Oscar winners. No major investment—no money riding on any of the nominees (honest!), just a mild, vaguely saprophytic curiosity.
(And yes, I realize that saprophytic almost definintely makes no sense whatosever in that context.)
Moreover, using the seemingly bottomless pool of numbers over at The Numbers, I thought it might be interesting to make some kind of list that showed the box office revenues of various Oscar winners, possibly contrasted against box office grosses of non-winners, of the movies that didn’t make it into the winners’ circle. I thought that, potentially, some interesting patterns might pop up. Like, I don’t know, a correlation between budgetary limitations (or lack thereof) and number of Oscars. Or, you know, whatever.
Actually, I still think it might be an interesting list, but it’s not going to come from me. Trying to figure out how I might go about putting this list together, I realize that it’s way too much work for something that I’m only interested in incidentally. Besides the fact that I understand virtually nothing of Academy Awards politics, a limitation that would severely limit my ability to draw any meaningful conclusions (or even interesting conclusions, never mind whether or not there was any factual basis)
So instead, what you get is the much less interesting (and much less extensive) list of the following items.
- Best Picture: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” (US Gross: $358,900,000)
- Actor: Sean Penn, “Mystic River.” (US Gross: $76,812,000)
- Actress: Charlize Theron, “Monster.” (US Gross: $22,000,000)