'Parasite' is seeing a huge Oscar bump at the box office. We looked at how other recent best-picture winners have fared.
- "Parasite" earned its biggest North American weekend box office over the long Presidents' Day weekend with nearly $7 million after winning the Oscar for best picture earlier this month.
- It's on its way to scoring one of the biggest post-Oscars box-office bumps in recent memory.
- Other recent best-picture winners, such as "The Artist," benefited from the Oscars, but most haven't performed as well after their big wins.
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Oscars champion "Parasite" received its biggest theatrical expansion yet in the US over the long Presidents' Day weekend and its biggest box-office weekend haul.
Its North American distributor Neon expanded the South Korean thriller, and first international film to win the Oscar for best picture, from 1,060 locations to 2,001 over the weekend. It raked in $6.8 million over the four-day holiday weekend, one of the biggest post-Oscars box-office bumps in recent memory.
"Parasite" was a hit before its Oscar wins (it also won best director, original screenplay, and international film), but has now made an impressive $44.5 million in the US and $180 million worldwide off of a budget of around $10 million.
If "Parasite" hits $50 million in the US, it will make 29% of its box office after the Oscars and be among the biggest gains for a best-picture winner of the 21st century. Others include 2011's "The Artist" (28.9%), 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire" (30.4%), and 2004's "Million Dollar Baby" (34.3%), according to Comscore.
But for the most part, the relationship between the Oscars and a movie's box-office success is a complicated one.
Heading into the Oscars, there wasn't a clear example of a movie that had received a significant bump from Oscar nominations. The Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Business Insider that it depends on whether a movie still has an "untapped audience." That's harder to come by in the age of streaming and online video.
In the case of "Parasite," it's already available on home release, which makes its post-Oscars box office even more impressive. Not all best-picture winners have performed as well.
Below are recent winners and their box-office bumps after the Oscars in North America, according to Comscore: