Oscars 2026: Tracking the Box Office of the Best Picture Contenders

by · Awards Daily

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The biggest problem with the Oscars, to my mind, is that they stopped factoring in the public. This was and remains a problem for Hollywood, too. At least this year, some movies in the race could be considered blockbusters.

If any year should give the Academy an incentive to shrink Best Picture down to five — or even six and expand every category to six — it would be this one. But let’s take a look at how the box office wound up from Box Office Mojo:

  1. Sinners $280 domestic/$369 worldwide
  2. F1 $189 domestic/$639 worldwide
  3. Marty Supreme $86 domestic / $105 worldwide (so far)
  4. One Battle After Another $71 domestic/$206 worldwide
  5. Hamnet $17 domestic / $42 worldwide (so far)
  6. Bugonia $17 domestic / $41 worldwide
  7. Sentimental Value $4 million domestic / $16 worldwide
  8. The Secret Agent – $3 million domestic / $6 worldwide
  9. Frankenstein N/A
  10. Train Dreams N/A

And here are the budgets for these movies:

  1. One Battle After Another $130-175 million
  2. F1 $135
  3. Frankenstein $120 million
  4. Sinners — $90 million
  5. Marty Supreme — $70 million
  6. Bugonia — $45-$50 million
  7. Hamnet — $35 million
  8. Train Dreams — $10 million
  9. Sentimental Value — $7.8. million
  10. The Secret Agent  — $5 million

With the exception of Sinners, every one of these movies made its money in the global film market, not the United States. Only Sinners flipped it, making much more money here than overseas.

Now let’s look at the films that made money but didn’t get into the race:

Wicked For Good — $342 domestic
Avatar Fire and Ash — $378 million domestic
Weapons — $151 million domestic

It seems that the budgets are too high for the kinds of films on offer and that making any money off of them is a challenge so I don’t know where that leaves us. One thing is for sure. Sinners stands out as one of the only success stories of the year, with audiences and critics.

 

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