“The King’s Speech” sold $6.5 million worth of tickets this weekend bringing its 15-week total to $123.8 million. Among recent Best Picture winners, that post-Oscars haul ranks just above that of 2007’s “No Country for Old Men.” Like “The King’s Speech,” that Coen brothers picture also claimed four Academy Awards; it made just $4.1 million in the weekend after those wins.
“The Hurt Locker,” was no longer playing in cinemas when it won the top prize at last year’s Oscars. The 2008 Best Picture, “Slumdog Millionaire,” won eight Oscars in all and made a whopping $12 million the following weekend (which was also its 15th week in theaters). Of its total take of $141.3 million, $42.9 million of that came after the Academy Awards.
Both the 2006 (“The Departed”) and 2005 (“Crash”) winners had long finished their theatrical runs by the Oscars time. The 2004 Best Picture champ was “Million Dollar Baby” which went on to make $8.1 million the following weekend.
While “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” may have swept the 2003 awards with a record-tying 11 Oscars, it had to settle for just $3.1 million the following weekend. Indeed, all but $10 million of its staggering $378 million in domestic gross came before the Academy Awards.
