What’s a Best Picture Oscar actually worth at the box office?
About $2.5 million, if the past week for “Anora” is anything to go by.
“Anora,” the indie flick that took home five statues at the 97th Academy Awards just over a week ago, is, at its heart, writer-director Sean Baker’s take on a classic rags-to-riches story. It seems fitting then, as one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners in modern Oscars history, that the film itself has seen a change in fortunes over the past week, notching a box office bump in the US.
Whirlwind
Based around the brief, chaotic romance between a sex worker and the son of a Russian oligarch, “Anora” was the seventh biggest film at the North American box office last week, after a theatrical expansion saw the film hit more than 800 extra screens. The $2.5 million haul in the seven days since its Oscars triumph was up ~7x from its takings the week before the ceremony, as Americans rushed out to watch the Academy’s latest darling.
While this post-Oscars surge has taken the film’s total gross to $46 million worldwide — impressive in light of its reported $6 million budget — it feels worthwile to note that “Mickey 17,” the latest release from Bong Joon Ho, who picked up Best Picture for “Parasite” back in 2020, made more in its “sluggish” debut this weekend than “Anora” has in 21 weeks. Even after its Oscars bump, “Anora” is still the lowest-grossing nonpandemic Best Picture of the last 45 years.
