The Business of Gold: Industry Insights Ahead of the Oscars
As Hollywood prepares for its biggest night of the year, we explore what the Academy Awards really mean for the industry, speaking with film educators, producers, and industry insiders about the economics, politics, and career impacts of Oscar gold.
An Open Field: This Year’s Race
With the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony just days away, this year’s race appears unusually competitive, with no single film dominating the preceding award shows.
Dan Hopkins, an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Production at Coventry University, observes the scattered distribution of wins across earlier ceremonies: “If you noticed across the award ceremonies so far, it doesn’t seem to be one film sweeping up across the board. You had Conclave get quite a few awards at the BAFTAs… then Screen Guild and the Independent Spirit had more, you had Anora was a big winner. And again, way back in the run-up, Emilia Perez was a big favourite, but then the controversy around that film has changed the perspective.”
Hopkins points to two strong contenders in the acting categories: “I think Timothée Chalamet should be a good shoo-in for the actor lead actor role… but also Adrian Brody’s role in The Brutalist is very strong and it’s a very sort of American film, has got certain aspects of American history and culture.”
The Real Economics of Oscar Success
While conventional wisdom suggests Oscar wins translate to significant financial upside, the reality is more complex, according to industry experts.
“The awards will give a good kind of financial boost to a film,” notes Hopkins. “If there’s a big sort of Hollywood-based film, it will have that second wind, that second opportunity to be shown again in cinemas.”
However, Roy Ashton from The Gersh Agency offered a more nuanced perspective at a recent MIP London talk. According to Ashton, filmmakers rarely see direct financial benefits from increased streaming activity following awards. Most streaming deals involve one-time payments rather than per-view compensation, meaning platforms themselves capture most of the financial upside from award-driven viewership spikes.
“The streamers aren’t paying extra when when you get that windfall hit” explains Ashton. In other words, the increased viewership benefits the platform’s retention metrics, not producer’s bank account.
The Buying of Oscars: Campaign Politics
Behind the scenes, the Academy Awards is fundamentally a business where producers often predetermine winners through aggressive campaigning rather than letting the work speak for itself.
The most notorious example remains Harvey Weinstein, whose companies won 81 Oscars during his tenure. Films like “Shakespeare in Love” (which controversially beat “Saving Private Ryan” for Best Picture in 1999), “The King’s Speech,” and “The Artist” weren’t necessarily the artistic standouts of their years, but benefited from Weinstein’s relentless schmoozing and campaign tactics that reportedly cost millions.
This influence game continues today. Major streamers like Netflix and Apple deploy massive campaign budgets for films like “CODA,” which won Best Picture despite modest critical reception. Similarly, Amazon’s considerable spending for “Manchester by the Sea” helped secure wins in a strategy that prioritised prestige over profit. According to some film critics, Netflix has gone “all-in” with the marketing budgets of Emilia Perez. The success of their campaign remains to be seen after the controversy of Gascon’s social media meltdown. In Hollywood’s inner circles, these campaigns are referred to as “buying Oscars”—a practice that reveals how much the industry’s highest honour is determined by marketing muscle.
Beyond marketing dollars, producer influence extends to controlling who even sees the films in contention. The Academy Screening Room—both physical venues and the members-only streaming platform—represents another critical battleground where producers flex their muscle. Getting a film into these screening rooms with premium placement and scheduling gives productions a significant edge, as Academy members simply cannot vote for films they haven’t seen.
The insider game of access to the Academy screenings and talent further tilts the playing field toward productions with connected producers who understand that Oscar campaigns begin not with quality but with the strategic choreography of who watches what and when.
The “Oscar Curse”: When Winning Backfires
The “Oscar curse” phenomenon—where an actor’s career unexpectedly declines following their win—reveals another surprising aspect of the Academy Awards.
Viola Davis, despite her extraordinary talent and Oscar win for “Fences,” candidly admitted while at Cannes that “everyone presumes that you are now sorted… so your phone stops ringing because people don’t think about that you need a job.” Even someone of Davis’s caliber reported a decline in quality offers following her Oscar win.
Perhaps the most dramatic example is Hilary Swank, who won two Best Actress Oscars by age 30 (for “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby”) yet struggled to maintain that trajectory. After her second win, Swank’s filmography became increasingly filled with forgettable projects like “The Reaping” and “P.S. I Love You.”
The pattern extends to other winners: Cuba Gooding Jr. went from his “Jerry Maguire” Oscar to direct-to-video films; Mira Sorvino never recaptured her “Mighty Aphrodite” momentum (though we now know Harvey Weinstein’s blacklisting played a role); and Halle Berry followed her groundbreaking “Monster’s Ball” win with “Catwoman.”
Industry insiders suggest that this phenomenon stems partly from unrealistic expectations and partly from a problem of typecasting after a defining role. For actors, an Oscar can be as much a ceiling as a floor.
Hopkins acknowledges that sustained success requires continuous effort: “I always tell my students, the jobs won’t come to you, you need to go out and be proactive and get jobs. You need to make the work happen rather than expecting it landing.”
What Makes an “Oscar Film”?
Despite claims that the Academy rewards artistic merit above all, certain types of stories and performances have historically fared better with voters.
Hopkins observes, “Certain stories work really well for the Oscars… there’s a lot of American stories where it’s a triumph against coming from a small background to making it big. Those sorts of things seem to always do well.”
Industry analysts have identified several recurring themes in Best Picture winners: period pieces, stories about show business, physical or mental transformations, biopics of famous figures, and narratives that make voters feel they’re supporting an important social cause without being too challenging.
Practical Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers
For filmmakers with Oscar ambitions, industry experts suggest that creative excellence must be matched with strategic thinking.
Hopkins emphasizes efficiency in filmmaking: “Less locations, less actors, and less dialogue—of everything, less is more always. And telling stories which people haven’t seen or trying to do something which is a hybrid of different things, which makes you stand out.”
This advice resonates with industry professionals who note that many breakthrough directors established themselves with tightly focused films before moving to larger canvases. As one producer explains, “Before Chloé Zhao made ‘Nomadland,’ she made ‘The Rider.’ Before Barry Jenkins made ‘Moonlight,’ he made ‘Medicine for Melancholy.’ Constraint forces creativity, and that creativity gets noticed.”
The Future of Award Shows in the Digital Age
With Oscar viewership declining for the past decade and audiences increasingly consuming content through short-form platforms like TikTok, industry observers question the continuing relevance of traditional award ceremonies.
When asked about this shift, Hopkins acknowledges, “I don’t necessarily think people are as interested in it. I think people like the content but are more passive with it now.”
Media analysts note that award shows face the same fragmentation challenges as all traditional broadcast events. “When the Oscars used to get 40 million viewers, there were basically four channels and no internet,” one network executive explains. “Now we’re competing with infinite content options, and younger viewers especially don’t have the patience for three-hour telecasts.”
Nevertheless, the Academy Awards continues to serve a crucial function in the industry ecosystem—signaling prestige, driving attention to films that might otherwise be overlooked, and providing a marketing platform that extends far beyond the actual broadcast.
As Sunday’s ceremony approaches, the statues themselves may be gold, but the real currency of the Oscars remains Hollywood’s most valuable commodity: attention.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).
