Do Directors Get a Best Picture Bump at the Box Office for Their Next Movie? Yes and No
Brian Welk
Turns out, when you’ve won Best Picture, most of the time, the only place you can go after that high is down.
Opening this weekend at the box office is “Mickey 17,” the first film from director Bong Joon Ho since his film won Best Picture for “Parasite” back in 2019. “Parasite” was something of a unicorn, an international film that crossed all borders and became a $259 million global commercial hit and an awards circuit sensation. Even with Robert Pattinson helping his cause, that’s going to be a tough benchmark to surpass. Warner Bros. is projecting a $40-50 million global opening weekend.
The difference this time is director Bong is working with a major studio, Warner Bros., rather than indie distributor Neon, and “Mickey 17” will open wide on 3,400 screens domestically, whereas “Parasite” at its peak only hit 2,000.
But when a director’s movie wins Best Picture, does their next one perform better?
In looking at the last 25 years of Best Picture winners and their directors, 20 of whom have released movies since winning the Oscar, only five have had films that outperformed their Best Picture-winning predecessor, despite the perception that generally these filmmakers are riding high. However, in 12 instances, that director’s next movie opened on more screens, generally wide, whereas the Best Picture winner received a platform awards release before moving wider.
Here are the five directors whose next films outperformed their Best Picture predecessors.
- Alejandro González Iñárritu – “Birdman” ($105.7 million worldwide) to “The Revenant” ($532.9 million WW)
- Martin Scorsese – “The Departed” ($277.2 million) to “Shutter Island” ($301 million)
- Kathryn Bigelow – “The Hurt Locker” ($49.2 million) to “Zero Dark Thirty” ($132.8 million)
- Tom Hooper – “The King’s Speech” ($419.0 million) to “Les Misérables” ($442.5 million)
- Chloé Zhao – “Nomadland” ($39.7 million million) to “Eternals” ($402.3 million)
A few quick caveats: Those numbers don’t account for inflation, and while we’re sure Zhao’s “Eternals” got some curiosity because it was directed by a recent Best Picture winner, “Eternals” was already in the can when “Nomadland” was completing its Oscar run, and it’s a Marvel movie. The same rules don’t apply. Her next post-Oscar movie is still to come.
But in each of those cases, the subsequent film was a studio release instead of an indie, and widely released, and it saw the benefits as a result. The examples of Iñárritu and Bigelow are perfect examples of a director leveling up, as those films would triple their screen count and saw even greater returns.
Others had comparable results, with some obviously having lengthy careers. Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood have been prolific since winning Best Picture and were before that, even if their immediate next films didn’t get them back to box-office or Oscar glory right away (Scott had “The Martian” well after “Gladiator” and Eastwood had “American Sniper” following “Million Dollar Baby”). The Coen Brothers fit into that category, too; their follow-up to “No Country for Old Men” was the tonal left turn “Burn After Reading,” and the two films did comparably at the box office, and “True Grit” would later top them both. And no one will hold it against Peter Jackson for “King Kong” not living up to the success of “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”
For everyone else, sustained success, or at least the same repeat level of success, has been a lot harder to come by. We have a couple theories as to why.
For one, the movie you get to make after you win an Oscar is often the far more personal one, the pet passion project you never got to make before, and those almost never do as well as the commercial awards bait that came before it. The Coen Brothers followed up “No Country” with “Burn After Reading” and then “A Serious Man,” which made only $9.2 million worldwide. Peter Jackson after “Kong” and “Lord of the Rings” went more intimate with “The Lovely Bones,” which did a respectable $94.8 million. At least one, Guillermo del Toro, was dinged by the pandemic, with his “Nightmare Alley” ($39.7 million) falling far short of his “The Shape of Water” ($196.2 million).
And sometimes the films just aren’t as good. Ben Affleck’s “Live By Night” following “Argo” was a massive flop, making just $22.7 million for the period crime drama. Steve McQueen’s first film after “12 Years a Slave” was the thriller “Widows,” which made only $75.9 million globally to “Slave’s” $188.5 million. Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” underperformed “Moonlight.” It took Sam Mendes five films before he sniffed what “American Beauty” did, and that was for a James Bond movie with “Skyfall.” Both of Rob Marshall’s follow-ups to “Chicago” — “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Nine” — didn’t recreate his Best Picture-winning success.
Zhao, for her next film though, will follow a similar pattern, making a larger studio film, “Hamnet,” for Focus Features and Universal, while the Daniels are also stationed at Universal for their follow-up to “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Sean Baker likely has the pick of the litter in terms of studios if he chooses to operate at a larger scale, but we imagine he wants to do his own thing. And Christopher Nolan, who is currently adapting “The Odyssey” for Universal, may not catch “Oppenheimer’s” near billion-dollar haul, but we think he’ll be just fine.
None of this is to suggest that “Mickey 17” won’t find an audience or will underperform. The bigger barriers surrounding the movie have been the film’s constant date changes, a lack of publicity outside of a London press junket, and a budget that IndieWire understands is $118 million. “Mickey 17” needs Bong’s cache if it hopes to break even. But it’s called Best Picture for a reason.
