![]() ![]() “Oscar strategies are myths,” says Tom Rothman, then-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. The thing is, not everyone agrees on what those moves were. (It stalled at $17 million in domestic grosses, a little more than 2 percent of the $785 million that Avatar collected en route to $2.7 billion globally.) A war movie hadn’t nabbed Best Picture since 1996’s The English Patient, and here was one backed by Summit Entertainment, a relatively small distributor with no Oscars to its name.Īgainst all odds, the personnel behind these films came up with a few key moves that sent them soaring past the competition on that year’s lineup, which included Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, and Up in the Air. Meanwhile, The Hurt Locker was a low-budget summer release that, like other movies about the ongoing Iraq War, posted modest box-office returns. It was Cameron’s longtime producing partner, Jon Landau, who encouraged a push for the top prize, a former Fox executive says. The studio knew Avatar’s technical achievements could thrive in below-the-line categories like Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ top prizes don’t tend to favor science fiction. ![]() Fox concocted unprecedented marketing schemes to attract audiences for Avatar, and nothing about the film guaranteed a wall-to-wall awards crusade (especially because Oscars prestige was considered the domain of art-house division Fox Searchlight see: Slumdog Millionaire, Little Miss Sunshine). ![]() Neither movie began as a Best Picture shoo-in. How could anyone not? “It’s such a damn good story,” says Jeffrey Godsick, the studio’s former executive vice-president of marketing. But the media and Hollywood insiders alike seized on the intrigue behind the pair’s public face-off. Cameron and Bigelow had been divorced since 1991 and by many accounts remained amicable. Today, the Fox studio corps responsible for Avatar’s in-house Oscars bid recall that season using the same David-versus-Goliath analogy that journalists employed at the time. For the latter, it would be a triumph for the lowest-grossing titleholder in the Academy Awards’ 82 years - and the first for a film directed by a woman. Were the former to win, it would mean a victory for history’s highest-grossing blockbuster. On the night of March 7, 2010, Avatar and The Hurt Locker were the two films still in serious contention for Best Picture, pitting James Cameron’s rousing sci-fi parable against Kathryn Bigelow’s suspenseful Iraq War drama. It was an Oscars rivalry like no other: the biggest movie in the world going head-to-head with one of the smallest, each made by ex-spouses with seemingly polar-opposite personalities. Photo: Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images The 2010 Oscars pitted two famous exes - Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron - against each other in a race studio sources remember like a battle between David and Goliath. ![]()
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