{"id":1362,"date":"2013-02-24T13:32:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T13:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2013\/02\/24\/oscars-2013-it-s-like-an-arms-race\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T15:27:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T14:27:18","slug":"oscars-2013-it-s-like-an-arms-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/oscars-2013-it-s-like-an-arms-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2013: It\u2019s like an arms race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Forget about the price of gasoline: The real skyrocketing expense this year is the Oscar race. With two deep-pocketed studios locked in one of the closest best picture duels in recent memory, the battle between \u2018Argo\u2019 and \u2018Lincoln\u2019 has sparked what several Hollywood executives say is the costliest campaign on record.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s like an arms race this year,\u201d said Jim Burke, a producer on last year\u2019s best picture nominee \u2018The Descendants\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The best picture contest recently has been dominated by independent productions such as \u2018The Hurt Locker\u2019 and \u2018The Artist\u2019 that couldn\u2019t easily throw money around as if it were confetti. But in the current Oscar race, Warner Bros.\u2019 \u2018Argo\u2019 and the Walt Disney Co.\u2019s \u2018Lincoln\u2019 are each spending an estimated $10 million (Dh36.7 million) and potentially much more touting their film\u2019s chances, up to double what a costly campaign has totalled in years past.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Other studios are only a little less profligate: Universal Studios (\u2018Les Miserables\u2019), 20th Century Fox (\u2018Life of Pi\u2019) and Sony Pictures (\u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019) all have spent lavishly on their \u2018For Your Consideration\u2019 promotions.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The money can be well spent: A best picture win can bring in millions more at the box office, and help sell a ton more DVDs. What\u2019s more, Oscar hardware can help woo image-conscious filmmakers into a studio\u2019s fold.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Disney, the distributor of \u2018Lincoln\u2019, has never won a best picture statuette, and Warner Bros. has a substantial interest in making \u2018Argo\u2019 director Ben Affleck and producer George Clooney feel a lot of love.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has curtailed the number of post-nomination screenings, parties and promotional email blasts, it has no power over paid advertising and related campaign expenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The spending blizzard includes covers in Hollywood\u2019s trade newspapers (a single-page Variety cover can cost as much as $80,000), 30-minute TV spots highlighting a film\u2019s bona fides (broadcast time for recent half-hour \u2018Lincoln\u2019, \u2018Argo\u2019 and \u2018Silver Linings Playbook\u2019 ads can cost more than $100,000) and first-class air travel, limousines and hotels for filmmakers skipping around the globe to woo awards voters and collect lesser trophies (\u2018Lincoln\u2019 star Daniel Day-Lewis doesn\u2019t fly coach and stay at the local EconoLodge).<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Outdoor \u201cwallscape\u201d advertising on buildings in prime real estate locales can run more than $200,000, including production and installation costs. And then, there are the high-end parties and receptions for the nominees, which, if held at tony establishments like the Beverly Hills Hotel, can set studios back $100,000 per event.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Awards-season bookkeeping, like the rest of Hollywood accounting, is an amorphous art form, which makes precise expenses hard to pinpoint. A blurry line separates the spending on a movie\u2019s theatrical and DVD releases with its Oscar-season efforts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Initial awards budgets, said veteran Academy Awards consultant Tony Angelotti, are typically amended numerous times with little liability over final costs. \u201cIf you spend $10 million and don\u2019t win any Oscars, no one really wants to see that final figure,\u201d Angelotti said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI know it\u2019s substantial,\u201d Elizabeth Gabler, whose Fox 2000 made \u201cLife of Pi,\u201d said of the awards promotions spending for director Ang Lee\u2019s film.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI know it\u2019s as much as we\u2019ve ever spent. We felt it was our responsibility to support the film in this way.\u201d The expenditures begin months before Tuesday\u2019s voting deadline by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Studios start targeting various precursor awards groups such as critics organisations and show business guilds in the fall, often wooing votes with an array of gifts. This year, members of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. received four different lavish \u201cLincoln\u201d books (including one devoted to Civil War recipes) as well as a special DVD that arrived in an inlaid, numbered box.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After the 250-plus member group gave Spielberg\u2019s film a record 13 nominations, each voter received a personally signed thank-you note from the director on his letterhead stationery. Universal sent every BFCA voter an iPod Shuffle (retail price: $50) pre-loaded with the songs from \u201cLes Miserables.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI remember thinking, in terms of gifts, this is a bit much,\u201d says Access Hollywood film critic Scott Mantz, a BFCA member. \u201cIn the 22 years I\u2019ve been covering awards seasons, I\u2019ve never seen anything quite like it. When you open up the mail and find a \u2018Les Miz\u2019 iPod, you know we\u2019re not in a recession anymore.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Universal said that its \u201cLes Miserables\u201d campaign, which is all but certain to bring a supporting actress Oscar to costar Anne Hathaway, cost less than $10 million. Harvey Weinstein, whose films \u201cThe Artist\u201d and \u201cThe King\u2019s Speech\u201d won the last two best picture trophies, said the runaway expenditures don\u2019t guarantee Oscar gold \u2014 and as the person who mastered the modern, take-no-prisoners awards campaign, he should know. \u201cI don\u2019t believe spending the money necessarily works, as we\u2019ve proven in the past,\u201d said Weinstein, who thinks \u201cSilver Linings Playbook\u201d has a chance to score an upset best picture win. \u201cAnd any money you spend has to make people go see the movie.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The open-wallet campaigning has left several best picture nominees with less resources scrambling to stay in the conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ll see on February 24 how influential those big spends are,\u201d said Michael Barker, whose Sony Pictures Classics is releasing \u201cAmour,\u201d which is shortlisted for both the best picture and foreign language races. \u201cI\u2019m sitting here with five nominations for \u2018Amour,\u2019 and I think that it received all those nominations is proof that academy members aren\u2019t always paying attention to the big campaigns.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forget about the price of gasoline: The real skyrocketing expense this year is the Oscar…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,56],"tags":[924,132,1646,1645,143,1613,1633],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity","category-news","tag-924","tag-an","tag-arms","tag-its","tag-like","tag-oscars","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3132,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions\/3132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}