the Oscars as Marketing

I talk a lot about the Academy Awards so I’m suprised that I had never considered this before, but I was listening to the /filmcast that featured Stephen Tobolowsky and he brought up the interesting concept that the Oscars are nothing more than a marketing tool for films that are currently in the theater. Based on his theory The Dark Knight didn’t get nominated for best picture because it already made a bucket of money but the Curious Case of Benjamin Button is still in theaters and still has money to be made…

Maybe this is happening more and more over time, but there has been a lot of discussion about how the films nominated this year are amoung the lowest grossing films ever to be nominated.

-Josh