Early years[edit]
From the first Oscars, there were instances of films whose initial, limited release at the end of a year was meant to qualify it for Academy consideration before a wider release. In 1933, MGM released the Greta Garbo classic Queen Christina in New York and Los Angeles the week after Christmas, expanding it to more cities once 1934 began. Six years later, it did the same with Gone with the Wind, which went on to win the Best Picture Oscar.[10]
"Oscar bait" was used in a critical 1948 review of John Ford's Fort Apache in The New Republic that ends with the sentence "Postcards are supposed to be sent through the mail; flashed self-consciously on the screen, they look like Oscar bait."[11][12] The New York Times used it in a 1955 article about the then-upcoming The Harder They Fall, Humphrey Bogart's final film.[13] A 1968 ad for The Lion in Winter quoted from a review in Cosmopolitan praising the performances of Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn as "Oscar bait outings."[14]
These all referred to films or performances that, while they might attract the attention of Academy voters, were not explicitly made with them in mind. But also in 1948, the Supreme Court of the United States's decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., forbidding the studios from owning theater chains, changed the film industry profoundly. With their pictures no longer guaranteed to have an adequate theatrical run, and television beginning to offer competition, the studios had to rely increasingly on marketing to make films profitable. Thus their release patterns began following the calendar even more closely than they already had.[10]
The Deer Hunter[edit]
The first film to deliberately seek Oscar nominations as a marketing strategy was The Deer Hunter in 1978. After a disastrous test screening of the lengthy Vietnam War epic in Detroit, Universal turned to another producer, Allan Carr, with both Broadway and Hollywood experience, for advice on how to successfully market a depressing film.[7] Carr realized that, with such a grim subject and brutal depictions of war and torture, the only way viewers would seek the film out was if it had been nominated for Academy Awards. Carr, once the producers had hired him as a consultant, arranged for two two-week screenings at a single theater in each of New York and Los Angeles before the year ended, the minimum requirements for Oscar eligibility at that time. The audiences were limited to critics and Academy members. After that, Universal pulled the film from distribution[8] save for some showings on Z Channel, a boutique cable network that catered to film enthusiasts with showings of rare, arty movies and exclusive director's cuts of more popular ones. "We will cultivate the right audience," Carr promised. "The Deer Hunter is an Oscar winner!"[7]
When the Oscar nominations were announced, The Deer Hunter received nine. It was immediately put into wide release with advertising and publicity materials drawing attention to the nominations. Ultimately it won five, including Best Picture. "It's a common pattern today," said Thom Mount, then president of Universal, years later. "But it was unheard of in 1978. Now everybody does it."[7] Critic Ty Burr agrees. "The practice is the equivalent of a triumphant slam dunk in the final seconds, and it often wins the game," he wrote in a 2013 New York Times Magazine article.[10]
1980s to present day[edit]
During the 1980s, as Hollywood moved away from director-driven films like The Deer Hunter, focusing on repeating the success of summer blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars (both of which had also been nominated for Best Picture), independent filmmakers refined Carr's methods of exploiting the Oscars. Merchant Ivory, who produced lavish costume dramas, often based on novels by Henry James or E. M. Forster, began to time their releases to align with the awards season.[15] Their 1985 adaptation of Forster's A Room with a View won three of the eight Oscars it was nominated for.
By 1991 the modern film-release calendar, in which studios released the movies they had the highest Oscar hopes for in autumn and December, was set. Independent-film mogul Harvey Weinstein sought prestige for his productions through Oscars; it culminated in a 1998 Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love, another costume drama.[10] Similar strategies to The Deer Hunter brought Weinstein's company another Best Picture in 2010 for The King's Speech, starring Colin Firth, who got his start in Merchant Ivory's 1980s films.[5] Use of the term "Oscar bait" in the media began to increase in the mid-1990s to a 2004 peak, after which it has remained stable.[16]
In the fall awards season of 2022, several film that were awards contenders, including The Fabelmans, Tár, Babylon, and Women Talking, underperformed at the box office.[17][18] Film industry analysts attributed the lower box office returns to a confluence of factors, such as the rise of streaming services, the increased output of franchise and superhero films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe,[19] the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and changes in audience viewing habits.[nb 1] The poor box office runs prompted film journalists and Hollywood directors to express doubt and concerns about the potential commercial viability of prestige and awards-worthy films in theaters.[20]
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