BAD BOUNCE EARLY AWARDS SEASON, OTHER FACTORS COMBINE TO HURT MOVIES' POST-NOMINATION GROSSES.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

The five films vying for the Oscar for Best Picture on Sunday have combined to add less than $60 million to their ticket sales since nominations were announced five weeks ago - nearly half the post-nomination business generated by last year's crop of contenders during the comparable time frame.

So what happened to the Oscar bounce that has traditionally resulted in an additional 15 percent to 20 percent bump in grosses after nominations are announced?

Some industry observers are quick to blame a compressed awards season that has Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony taking place a full month earlier than in years past. But others point to such simple factors as the number if weeks a film had been in release at the time of its nomination, the number of additional theaters a studio booked a nominated film in, and whether the title was already available on home video.

The biggest success story has been the Clint Eastwood-directed drama ``Mystic River.'' When ``Mystic'' received a nod for Best Picture, it had grossed $59.1 million and was playing in just 133 locations. Warner Bros. sent the film back into wide release where it has earned an additional $20.3 million so far and is expected to reach $80 million by this weekend.

``The plan was to sell this movie by word of mouth and let it develop its own undercurrent,'' said Dan Fellman, president of distribution at Warner Bros. ``We were hoping that by the end of the year, we would be nominated for a series of awards and be on the top 10 lists. The weekend before the Golden Globes, we brought the movie back into wide release to see if the word of mouth and the accolades would bring in more of a mainstream audience. That was our plan and we were very fortunate.''

In addition to Best Picture, ``Mystic'' also earned a Best Director nod for Eastwood and acting nominations for Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Marcia Gay Harden.

``It was a perfect strategy by Warner Bros,'' said box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co. ``It meant millions of more dollars.''

New Line Cinema's ``The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King'' had already earned a massive $338.3 million by Jan. 25, the day of the nominations. Since then, ``King'' has added nearly $23 million to its coffers and is the sixth-highest grossing movie of all time.

But the 20th Century Fox adventure-drama ``Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World'' has added just $6.7 million since nomination day. The film had grossed $85.3 million when it received 10 Oscar nominations.

``When you are at $85 million, you aren't going to be discovered,'' said Fox Distribution President Bruce Snyder. ``People already know about you at that point.''

Snyder said that since ``Commander'' opened up on 3,100 screens, the studio clearly wasn't attempting any kind of platform rollout to garner award recognition.

``We were going for as big a theatrical release as we could get right from the beginning,'' Snyder said.

Meanwhile, Focus Features' ``Lost in Translation'' had been a solid art house hit with a gross of $34.6 million when it received several major Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor (Bill Murray) and Best Director and Screenplay (both for Sofia Coppola).

Since the nominations, ``Translation'' has added $8.5 million to its grosses despite the fact that the film also bowed on DVD earlier this month and quickly became a top seller.

Since Universal Pictures' ``Seabiscuit'' had been a summer release that made its DVD debut in December, a box office bounce was not much of a possibility. It was only re-released back into theaters on an extremely limited basis.

The biggest difference between the past two years is that the 2002 Best Picture winner, ``Chicago,'' had one of the biggest Oscar bumps ever as it went from $64.5 million pre-nominations to a final gross of $170.6 million.

``Last year, every single Best Picture nomination was a December release and therefore those films had a lot of box office in them by the time they were nominated,'' Dergarabedian said. ``They were newer films.''

Brandon Gray, editor of Boxofficemojo.com, said the shortened Oscar season deprived the studios ``of real prime real estate during that post- nomination'' phase.

``I think next year we'll see the studios releasing their movies accordingly,'' Gray said. ``Maybe the Oscar contenders coming out in November instead of December. It will probably push things forward a month or so, so we won't have the normal glut of Oscar contenders around Christmas. 'Cold Mountain' was one of the most obvious casualties.''

Greg Hernandez, [phone]

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- color) no caption (photo collage)

Box:

(1) 2003 NOMINEES

(2) 2002 NOMINEES

Source: Box Office Mojo 

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist