Los Angeles — "Traffic" grew more congested. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" sprang upward. And "Chocolat" gave a boost to Junior Mint sales at theater concession stands everywhere.
Even if those movies lose the best-picture race at the Academy Awards on Sunday, they're already winners. Each has rung up tens of millions of dollars in box-office receipts since last month's Oscar nominations, which sent many moviegoers scrambling to catch them before the awards broadcast.
"It's the watercooler effect. The Oscar telecast is one of the most widely viewed entertainment events, and people like to talk about the movies," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
"Come Monday the 26th, if you haven't seen those films, you can't talk about them and you feel left out."
Unlike many awards seasons, when all five best-picture contenders remain in wide release, the Oscar bounce this year was mainly spread among those three films. "Erin Brockovich" and "Gladiator," the other top nominees, are long since out on video.
"The fact that only three of the competing films are in the marketplace in any significant way means the pie's bigger for the rest of us," said Jack Foley, senior vice president of distribution at USA Films, which released "Traffic."
Even before the Oscar nominations, "Traffic" and "Crouching Tiger" had defied the odds and become commercial successes. "Traffic" is a complex drug-war drama with a huge cast and three intertwining plots. "Crouching Tiger" is a Chinese martial-arts epic with subtitles for its Mandarin dialogue.
Audiences already had embraced "Traffic" to the tune of $71 million by the weekend before the nominations. That same weekend, "Crouching Tiger" hit $60 million and passed "Life is Beautiful" as the biggest foreign-language hit ever.
But the best-picture nomination allowed "Crouching Tiger" to move into many small towns where foreign-language films would not normally play, said Michael Barker, co-president of the film's distributor, Sony Pictures Classics. "It played in my hometown, Kerrville, Texas, where a foreign-language film had never played," Barker said. "There's no way that would have happened if the best-picture nomination had not happened."
Last weekend, both movies hit the $100 million mark. That performance is even more notable considering they have never played wider than about 1,800 theaters each. Big Hollywood pictures typically can run in 3,000 cinemas or more.
"Chocolat," a tale of sensual freedom versus repression in a French village, has more than doubled its domestic gross since the nominations, climbing to $56 million this past weekend.
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