The Oscar bounce is a big thud this year

The movie business is in the midst of a phenomenal roll, with the astounding box-office success of "Friday the 13th" helping propel Hollywood to its biggest three-day Presidents Day weekend of all time. But it was another lackluster weekend for the other movies that are supposed to be in the spotlight at this time of year -- the best picture Oscar nominees. In fact, the whispers you hear everywhere around town are asking the same hushed question: What happened to the fabled Oscar bounce?

The Academy Awards' best picture nominees were announced Jan. 22, an event quickly commemorated by a blitzkrieg of expensive full-page ads in the trades, the New York Times and my newspaper, designed to use the cachet of a best picture nomination to nudge reluctant moviegoers into the theaters. But at a time when the rest of the movie business is booming, the best picture nominees -- with the obvious exception of the crowd-pleasing "Slumdog Millionaire" -- are doing a slow fade. Only one of the five, "The Reader," has made more of its overall box-office take after it earned a best picture nod.

It's no surprise that "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" made the vast majority of its money before the Oscar nominations, since it was always viewed as a mainstream commercial picture, featuring a big Hollywood star, Brad Pitt, and an A-list director, David Fincher. Still, considering how much extra money Paramount has spent pushing "Button" for a best picture win, it's hard to determine whether the Oscars have made any real difference for the film, which grossed $104.3 million before the nominations and only $17.9 million after. Even though "Slumdog" has won virtually every major award known to man, it still made more money ($44.7 million) pre-nominations than after ($41.8 million). Even "Milk," a film that seemed entirely dependent on a lift from the Oscars, actually had its biggest-grossing weekend way back in early December, when it did $2.6 million, a weekend figure it hasn't equaled since.

Here's one perspective on how little the best picture nominations have meant this year: Even without a best picture nod, "Doubt" has out-grossed three of the five best picture nominees, while "Defiance" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which barely registered with Oscar voters -- earning one major nomination between them -- have each out-grossed both "The Reader" and "Frost/Nixon." The last film is the most striking commercial failure of the season. Losing more theaters each week, "Frost/Nixon" made a paltry $473,000 this weekend, giving it a total of $16.3 million after 11 weeks in the market, with nearly 60% of its overall gross coming before the Oscar nominations.