How Good Are the Oscars At Predicting

November 2007

I took two lists:

1. The American Film Institute’s “AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition”, published in 2007, and

2. Box Office Mojo’s “All Time Box Office Domestic Grosses – Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation (2007 ticket prices),

and, for each film on the lists, determined the number of Oscars won, nominated for, or was awarded a special Oscar.   Why?  I was hoping to find how good the Oscars are at predicting the future “artistic” (critical, film quality) and the future “commercial” (financial, popularity) success of films.

This essay provides what I found.  

After finding the number of Oscars won, nominated for, or awarded a special Oscar, I took an average of the numbers for each film, one average for the AFI list and one average for the Box Office Mojo’s list.   For the AFI list, the average number of Oscars is 6.6.  And, for the Box Office Mojo’s list the average is 5.3.  To me, these averages are very close.  The averages show that most of the films on each list were well recognized by the Oscar award process.  That this is so suggests that the Oscars are good at predicting both artistic and commercial successes.  But, only 24 films overlap the two lists. 

Here are some conclusions made from the Oscar averages for the two lists, and the lack of much overlap of movies on the two lists:

1. Using the numbers of Oscars that a movie wins, is nominated for, or is awarded a special recognition Oscar is a reliable forecaster of a movie’s artistic or commercial success.

2. The Oscars award system is able to predict both artistic and commercial successful movies, even though the two categories of success (artistic and commercial) have many different films.  That these films are very much different is shown, I believe, by the fact that only 24 movies overlap the two lists.  This suggests that the Oscar award system is a remarkable planned and comprehensive award system.  The award system is able to accomplish two much different and equally difficult goals – predicting artistic success and predicting commercial success. 

An explanation, that I am proposing here, for being able to predict (forecast) two very diffident types of success is that the Oscar awards given to films can be grouped into two categories, awards decided by  “artistic” decision makers, and awards that are decided by film craft decision makers.

Artistic decision makers are, in my opinion, directors, actors, writers (story tellers).  Awards from this group include best directing, best acting, best writing, and connected categories. 

“Film craft” decision-makers represent the aspects of a film that are more visual, more auditory (technology).   These decision makers are not so much interested in the story of the film and what the story is saying, but more the visual and auditory effects.  Awards that are in this category include special effects, animated features, visual effects, original music, and connected categories.

For each of the films on both lists, I have totaled the number of “artistic” Oscars associated with the film and the number of “film craft” Oscars associated with the film.  (“Associated” means an Oscar won, an Oscar nomination, and/or a “special” Oscar received.)  And, then I took an average of each film's numbers, for both lists.

The resulting averages, I believe, are revealing.  For example, films on the AFI list received artistic Oscars an average of 4.5 times.  Films on Majo’s list received artistic Oscars an average of 2.5 times.  But, looking at the “film craft” category, the AFI’s films received Oscars an average of 1.4 times, and the Majo list films received “film craft” Oscars an average of 2.4 times, a reversal of the “artistic” averages.

(The averages of the two categories of Oscars, for both lists, do not add up to the average of overall Oscars for the lists (without categories), given above on page 1, because for the categories, the best picture award was removed from a film’s Oscar numbers.  This was done because voters for “best picture” come from groups, artistic voters and film craft voters.)

Thus, I conclude, built into the Oscar system, is an ability to both recognize (predict) probable “artistic” successful films and also to recognize (predict) probable “commercially” successful films, although the two categories, mostly have different films on in the categories.

Those who create the “best films ever” lists, such as the AFI lists, are likely more attuned and in synchronization with the “artistic” group of Oscar voters who decide which films will receive Oscar recognition.   Those who create the “most successful commercial films”, namely the movie going public who buys tickets, are likely more attuned and in synchronization with the “film craft” group of Oscar voters who predominant in deciding which films receive Oscar recognition in the “film craft” categories.

Several other interesting (to me) observations and conclusions can be reached by evaluating the AFI and Mojo lists.  These are:

1. Twenty-four films overlap the lists.  These films are:

American Graffiti

Ben Hur

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

E.T., the Extraterrestrial

Forrest Gump

Gone With the Wind

Jaws

Lawrence of Arabia

M*A*S*H

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Rear Window

Rocky

Star Wars

The Best Years of Our Lives

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Godfather

The Graduate

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Sixth Sense

The Sound of music

Titanic

Tootsie

West Side Story

Twenty-four does not seem to me to be a large overlap of films between the two lists, yet, the average total Oscar associations received by both lists (6.6 and 5.3) are close.  As already concluded above, this says to me that the Oscar process is able to recognize two types of films, artistically successful and commercially successful.

2. Fourteen of the commercial (Mojo) list films are animations.  A conclusion here is that a important segment (from the perspective of commercial success) of the movie going public are children, and Hollywood, recognizing this, made a good decision to build into their major award system (the Oscars) the ability to give recognition to animations.   Two films (Snow White and Toy Story) are on the AFI list and only one film, Snow White, overlaps both lists.   The 15 animations on the two lists received a total of 33 Oscar associations, with an average of 2.0 per film.   Only three of these Oscars were in the “artistic” category”:  Toy Story – Best Writing; Finding Nemo – Best Writing; and Shrek – Best Writing.

3.  An important conclusion, I think, that can be reach in evaluating the two lists is how important sequels are to Hollywood commercial success.  Twenty of the 96 films (21%) on the commercial list are the original, or the sequel, to the original.  (Raiders of the Lost Ark – 3; Jurassic Park – 2; Pirates of the Caribbean – 2; Shrek - 2; Spiderman – 2; Lord of the Rings – 3; and Star Wars – 6).    With six places on the commercial list, the Star Wars franchise might be one of the most profitable enterprises ever devised and conducted, in or out of filmmaking.   Star Trek, and any of its sequels, is interestingly missing from the commercial list.  Certainly, from the perspective of commercial success, Star Wars has been much more successful.

4.  Of the 100 films on the AFI list, 72 were either nominated for or won “Best Picture”.  Since three of the films on the AFI list (Intolerance; Gold Rush, and The General) predated the Oscars, the Oscar “Best Picture” award system was able to predict the artistic success of a film 74% of the time, with just the “Best Picture” category.   This is a pretty good record, it seems to me, and says that the good judgment of the decision-makers (voters) in this category is very high. 

5.  And, finally, the institution (entity, organization) that is behind the “Oscar award system” has a record that shows it is extremely successful conceived, planned, and managed.   Management students should take note.