More than any other Best Picture nominee, “Gandhi” needs Oscar’s help!
For the Columbia Pictures release, the cornerstone of its marketing plan is the 11 nominations it received, the best of any 1982 picture. Moviegoers were barraged with “Gandhi” advertising ballyhooing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Awards’ nomination within hour of the Feb. 17 announcement of all nominees.
In anticipation of this Oscar windfall, Columbia doubled the number of theaters carrying the historical drama to 600 on Feb. 18, supported by stepped-up advertising via Ogilvy & Mather.
“So all we’ve got to do come Thursday morning [Feb. 17] is record a voice that puts in the number of nominations [in ‘Gandhi’ tv spots] and that goes on the network Thursday night,” said Columbia Pictures marketing and research division president Marvin Antonowsky days before the nominations were announced. Such pre-planning is par for the course in the arena where Academy Awards are the biggest name in town.
“Columbia has held back ‘Gandhi’s’ distribution so that it would peak at Oscar time, rather than before, as all the others which have already made their money,” noted movie marketing consultant Charles Powell.
“Gandhi,” with $14.5 million in box-office sales, is well behind other Best Picture nominees such as “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” which is already the all-time box-office champ returning $200 million to Universal in film rentals. Rentals are the portion of cinema ticket sales earned by film distributors like Columbia Pictures, which is around half of total ticket sales. The other three Best Picture nominees this year are Universal’s “Missing,” Columbia’s “Tootsie” and 20th Century-Fox Pictures “The Verdict.”
“Gandhi” premiered in December, using what is known as a platform release, opening in a few theaters but broadening distribution in pre-planned increments. Last year’s Best Picture winner, Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Chariots of Fire,” following a similar plan, was in position to collect an additional $6 million to $7 million in film rentals (the portion returned to the studio, usually half the gross), noted Alan Ladd Jr., whose company held U.S. distribution rights.
“Tootsie” received 10 nominations, and “E.T.” collected nine nominations. Other leaders were MGM/UA’s “Victor/Victoria” (7), Columbia’s “Das Boot” (6), Paramount Pictures’ “An Officer and a Gentleman” (6), Universal’s “Sophie’s Choice” (5) and 20th Century Fox’s “The Verdict” (5).
While a Best Picture Oscar will nearly always translate into sharply increased box office receipts, other Oscars usually do not. Universal Pictures’ platform release of “Francis,” though passed over for Best Picture, is designed to capitalize at the box office on the Best Actress nomination and “acclaim that Jessica Lange is getting,” said Gordon Armstrong, VP-advertising, publicity & promotion.
Both “Francis” and “Gandhi” relied on platform releases, opening in just a few theaters in December to qualify for Oscar consideration, hoping to build form anticipated critical kudos and word-of-mouth from audiences.
Ad campaigns in Hollywood trade newspapers, a screenings and other promotions are mounted by studios for their Oscar contenders, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars a film. As a counterpoint, studios also mount ad campaigns for surefire noncontenders to stroke egos of stars and other creative talent in front of the entire industry. Unlikely candidates getting the Oscar consideration ads included “Honkytonk Man,” “The Tempest,” “Night Shift” and “That Championship Season.”
POSTSCRIPT – “Gandhi” made an impressive Oscar sweep winning eight Oscars (out of 11 nominations) including Best Picture.
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