In terms of respect and publicity, winning an Academy Award is worth everything, and it’s the recognition from your peers that matters the most, and herpty dur durr. But when you get right down to brass tacks, as research firm IBISWorld recently did, it’s money in the bank, baby, with the average Best Picture winners in the last four years seeing a box-office bump of 22.2 percent (or $20.3 million) after being nominated, followed by another 15.3 percent (or $14 million) after taking home the prize. Furthermore, “since 2006, the average Oscar-nominated movie earned 254.4 percent of its budget back in box office sales”—meaning lower-budget films have the chance to really clean up should they get nominated, often making as much as a quarter of their total box office during awards season. Of course, this is all fairly logical—Oscar nominations often serve as a “must-see” list for some people, and nominees tend to hang around theaters longer when they’re in the running—but still, it’s interesting to see the “honor of just being nominated” put into dollar-dollar bills that everyone can understand.
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