Oscars Aim for Mass Appeal

The movie industry hopes to draw a bigger audience for the Academy Awards this year by including more popular films among its nominees for Best Picture. This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences doubled the number of movies considered for the top prize, Best Picture, to 10 from five. The awards show once garnered massive ratings, but in recent years has seen its audience age and fall away, and many question its standing as a definitive reflection of pop culture. But the larger number of nominees allows movies with mass appeal to compete with art house flicks that the academy favors—three of the 10 selected are among the top eight grossing films of the year. The nomination of The Blind Side was one of the biggest surprises, with its family-friendly football story designed to appeal to heartland viewers. Though last year's ceremony drew an audience of 36 million and was 13 percent bigger than the previous year's, it was still far smaller than the all-time high of 55 million in 1998—the year Titanic received 14 nominations and won 11 Oscars.