Are The Oscars Headed For Irrelevancy?

(Photo by Santi Visalli/Getty Images)
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Leave it to comedian and HBO stalwart Bill Maher to nail the issue: the Oscars, he said in Friday night’s Real Time monologue, are a national rite of television watching where we turn to each other and say, “No, I haven’t heard of that one either.”
Yes, yes, of course you’ve heard of Oscar Best Picture nominees Dune: Part Two and Wicked (technically, Part One). Given their respective box office grosses of more than $700 million globally (and respective nine-figure marketing budgets), you may even have seen them in a theater, the way the Motion Picture Academy and many of its members would prefer.
Eight smaller films nominated for Oscar Best Picture have had limited success at the box office ... [+] around the world.
(graphic by David Bloom)
But what about the other eight Best Picture nominees? Combined, those eight films have generated barely half of what either Wicked or Dune 2 have brought in, according to BoxOfficeMojo.
While it’s wonderful that the Motion Picture Academy continues to honor, and spotlight, more artistically ambitious films that may not be big box-office winners, the resulting lists of honorees also are a symptom of the industry’s bigger challenges.