Oscar Nominees which are Struggling to Offset the Costs of Movie Production

Oscar films struggling to break even 

The Oscars are in less than a month and the debate continues: “who will win best picture?”  

There’s no way of knowing, but what if there was? Online casino guide Japan-101 compared the nominees to find out which film might win if it was down to the most cost-effective film made. 

• Avatar: The Way of Water had the highest budget with $350m 
• Top Gun: Maverick made the most money back in profits worldwide
• All Quiet on the Western Front had the smallest budget as well as the lowest worldwide gross profit 

2023 Best Picture Nominees	Budget ($)	Gross Worldwide Profit ($)	Proportion
Top Gun: Maverick	170,000,000	1,488,732,821	8.7 x
Avatar: The Way of Water	350,000,000	2,214,990,702	6.3 x
Everything Everywhere All at Once	25,000,000	106,948,444	4.2 x
The Banshees of Inisherin	10,301,077	41,064,329	3.9 x
Elvis	85,000,000	287,340,048	3.4 x
The Fabelmans	40,000,000	28,523,036	0.7 x
Tár	35,000,000	13,517,605	0.4 x

Top Gun: Maverick made the most money back proportionally with 8.7 times gross worldwide profit compared to the Avatar’s 6.3 times. Therefore, Top Gun was the most cost effective and the least expensive overall, which would make it the frontrunner for Best Picture. 

Avatar: The Way of Water was the most expensive film to make due to its eyewatering £350m budget, but ended up the second most cost effective, making back 6.3 times its budget.

The gross worldwide profit was $2.2bn, just shy of being double Top Gun: Maverick’s $1.4bn. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once came in as the third most cost effective overall despite having the third smallest budget. Amassing almost $107m gross profit after a comparatively modest budget of $25m, the film made back 4.2 times its initial spend. 

Of the eight films nominated for best picture, The Banshees of Inisherin had the second smallest budget standing at just over $10m. Meanwhile, the gross worldwide profit came in at 3.9 times, which makes it the fourth most cost effective. 

This was only a little more than Elvis. Despite making a healthy $287m gross worldwide profit at the box office, this comes in as fifth making it the third most expensive overall, due to the $85m budget. 

Bringing up the rear are The Fabelmans and Tár. The two films had budgets of $40m and $35m, respectively, and made back less than their budget suggesting they’d be unsuccessful at the Oscars if it was based on money, and makes them the least cost-effective films of all the nominees. 

A spokesperson for Japan-101 said: “It’s astonishing to see the amount of money that goes into making films. 

“The difference in the amount spent is also incredible when you consider quality of the products produced at the end.  

“Two of the films made back billions in gross worldwide profits, while the rest were nowhere near, and yet all the films are brilliant in their own right.” 

Credit to: japan-101.com who carried out the research and supplied the above post.