Filmmakers and studio executives, be warned: a long-suspected Oscars curse may in fact be real.
Over the past 13 years, the vast majority of best director winners have followed up their wins with disastrous films that tanked at the box office or alienated viewers. These films ultimately brought the highs of a career-defining moment crashing down to the reality of the fickle and unpredictable tastes of modern audiences.
Take a look and a pattern becomes clear: Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012) follow-up Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) was a box office disaster. Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) follow-up First Man (2018) failed to connect. Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley (2021) didn’t come close to making back its budget after The Shape of Water (2018) dazzled the Academy. Chloé Zhao followed up the gorgeous Nomadland (2020) with the would-be superhero franchise starter, Eternals (2021). That one landed with a thud.
The heretofore suspected best director curse — seen as early as 1980 with the epic Western and studio bankrupting Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s post-The Deer Hunter dud — lurched into full view in recent weeks with Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho’s big-budget, big-swing sci-fi bomb.
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And hey, maybe the curse isn’t real and something else is happening here. Doherty suggested to THR that the best director Oscar may create a halo effect around the filmmaker, which can play a part in dooming his or her follow-up project.
“I wonder if the people working with the director — producers and writers and actors — are over-awed and therefore less willing to question his/her judgment because his/her auteurist brilliance has been validated by the industry’s highest award,” he said. “Back in the studio days, a mogul could tell the director on the payroll the film was too long and he needed to cut 25 minutes. And that was that. Who today would have the stones to say that to Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan?”
For people unaware. European countries have multiple film festivals as well as awards associated with them. Your country probably has a few.
They are a much better indicator of a movie’s quality than Oscars has been for a long time.
There’s a lot of reasons there:
- Oscar winning directors get too much of a free hand on budget and runtime - Mikey 17 was really good but with that budget it was doomed to, at best, break even.
- They get offered big projects they may be unsuited for - there was nothing about Nomadland that said Chloé Zhao was ready to direct a blockbuster Marvel movie and it just felt like a cynical exercise to get a bit of indie cred. I doubt she had much creative freedom on The Eternals and would be interested to hear her story about that project when enough time has passed.
- They decide it is a good time to get that passion project greenlit and out when it stood a better chance of finding an audience - I’m a big GdT fan but his Nightmare Alley didn’t do much for me. I like all.of his films but would rank that somewhere towards the bottom.
The ones who go against this trend have won for bigger budget films and then dial it back and make smaller, more personal films which can get done on a lower budget but will get extra eyeballs because of the Oscar win and so can turn a profit.
That said, the “curse” may be no bad thing. I suspect Bong knew Mickey 17 wouldn’t cover the costs but felt like this was his chance to get an expensive film made on the studio’s dime. He may even have enjoyed the idea of an anticapitalist film getting a great reception but costing a big American studio money. He’ll not have any problem getting future projects funded because of this, they may just have a more modest budget.
I don’t think it really matters much. For example, Chloé Zhao doesn’t seem to be having trouble getting big names to line up to fund or star in her next project (a dramatized tragic moment in the life of William Shakespeare). I suspect most blame the failure of The Eternals on other factors (like the terrible script), not her. I further suspect that the house it probably paid for is more than enough to make up for any twinge of disappointment she has that it didn’t please the fans.
Totally. I feel like winning Best Director is your one-time free pass to get a risky project greenlit that normally you could never.
And if those movies don’t smash the box office then maybe, in part, it’s because the director quietly never intended them to be the kind of movies that would.
I didn’t realize we expected Oscar winners to make profitable movies.
I always thought they were different lanes.
I also like to see this analysis for 20 years ago before people went to the movies less and less.
Feel like Tarantino should be mentioned as he started his career with more niche and artsy films whereas his later works have been big blockbusters while keeping a high level of quality.
Oscars are a high school popularity contest… Nothing more
Paid by* they’re basically no difference than if you and me decided what movie was best except a lot of money involved.
Guilermo del Toro speaks about his auteur philosophy being, “one for them, then one for me”, meaning he alternates between potential commercial successes and passion projects.
Mickey went too far off script with the story IMO. The books were way better
Went off script in a typical Hollywood way that turned the working class into a patronizing joke, then wonders where the market went.
Haven’t see Mikey 17 yet, but it doesn’t looks so different as the other movies he have done. If anything, Parasite is the outliner in his career.
