A year after ‘Barbenheimer,’ 2025 Oscar Best Picture contenders are largely box-office lightweights
One year later, the Barbenheimer shadow looms over the Academy Award Best Picture race.
The 10 nominees unveiled Thursday have a collective global box-office revenue of $1.7 billion. That might seem like an impressive number, but it represents a 37 percent drop from the $2.7 billion of the previous year.
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How is it that the numbers slipped year-to-year by a billion dollars? Much as there were two blockbuster hits in 2023 — Barbie and eventual Best Picture winner Oppenheimer — so too were there a pair of massive hits in 2024: Dune: Part Two and Wicked. Each has grossed more than $700 million worldwide, not too shabby. However, those totals pale in comparison to the more than $2.4 billion combined that were racked up at the multiplex by Barbie ($1.4 billion) and Oppenheimer ($975 million). The sheer staggering nature of their record-breaking dominance over the 2023 box office remains a singular, unprecedented achievement.
SEE ‘Emilia Pérez,’ ‘The Brutalist,’ and ‘Wicked’ lead 2025 Oscar nominations: See the full list
Meanwhile, four of the films on this year’s Best Picture list — I’m Still Here, Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, and Nickel Boys — have taken in under $15 million apiece theatrically, per Box Office Mojo. There’s a caveat with Emilia Pérez, however; Netflix typically doesn’t provide domestic numbers and its $10.7 million is all international.
By comparison, the year before, there was only one Best Picture nominee that grossed less than $22 million: Maestro with just $383,532, again a Netflix title whose receipts don’t account for anything in the United States and that theatrical window.
This year’s global box office of the Best Picture 10 also represents a more than 60 percent drop from the massive $4.4 billion taken in by the 10 films for the 2023 Oscars, led by the $2.3 billion global haul of Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick (just shy of $1.5 billion).
The 2025 Best Picture nominees, ranked by global box office (Box Office Mojo figures through Jan. 23)
Dune: Part Two — $714,644,358
Wicked — $710,548,230
The Substance — $76,513,824
Conclave — $77,985,123
A Complete Unknown — $63,388,085
Anora —$33,661,912
I’m Still Here — $14,184,611
Emilia Pérez — $10,745,848
The Brutalist — $5,886,721
Nickel Boys — $1,285,186
The 2024 Best Picture nominees, ranked by global box office (Box Office Mojo figures, final):
Barbie — $1,447,038,421
Oppenheimer — $975,594,978
Killers of the Flower Moon — $158,764,012
Poor Things — $117,625,455
The Zone of Interest — $52,631,884
The Holdovers — $45,677,183
Past Lives — $42,530,801
Anatomy of a Fall — $36,051.506
American Fiction — $22,483,370
Maestro — $383,532
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