All the same, if "Hotel Rwanda" distributor MGM spent $10 million on its Oscar campaign, it could wipe out all the film's profits. (MGM is spending a little more than $1 million, which includes promoting a best actor nomination for star Don Cheadle, best supporting actress for Sophie Okonedo and best original screenplay for Keir Pearson and Terry George.)
Of other movies' lavish campaigns, Peter Adee, MGM's worldwide marketing president, said: "We can't compete on that level, and we don't remotely think that we should. A lot of people have subscribed to the theory that more is better. Well, we don't have more, so we have to be better."
As recently as 1989, "Driving Miss Daisy" won best picture without much of a campaign. That was before the advent of Miramax Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein, who is largely credited (or blamed) with turning the Oscar campaign season into a high-cost, bare-knuckles brawl, engineering such upsets as the 1998 period comedy "Shakespeare in Love's" win over Steven Spielberg's World War II drama "Saving Private Ryan."
More recently, Universal Pictures spent small fortunes pushing the Oscar chances for its "A Beautiful Mind" (which won the top Oscar) and "Seabiscuit" (which did not). This year, the studio is spending heavily on "Ray."
Winning an Oscar still means a spike in theater ticket sales. And with DVD sales and rentals now representing more than 60% of a studio's revenue, spending even as much as $15 million on an Academy Award campaign can be a good investment. In this 15-minute culture, Oscar is one brand that lasts.
"That money comes back in spades in terms of more rentals, more sell-through [video purchases], more television fees.... The bottom line is those awards have a life probably as long as that statue," said Russell Schwartz, president of marketing for New Line, which took home a bushel of Oscars last year for the third part of its "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, said a film needs to capitalize on the lead-up to the Oscars, when the buzz is at its peak. It's why, only a week after "Ray" received Oscar nominations for best picture, director and actor, the studio released the DVD. "It's already sold almost 5 million units," Kornblau said, "and generated consumer spending of about $90 million."
Had the studio held the DVD release until after the Oscars, as it did for "The Pianist" two years ago, "I don't believe we would have done as well," he said.
