by Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - There may be only one gold Ring at the movies now, but Hollywood's studios are banking on future box office, video and DVD gold for several movies after this week's Oscar nominations.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, a fantasy film about a battle over a powerful gold ring whose owner can rule Middle Earth, Tuesday grabbed the most nominations, 13, of any movie this year for Hollywood's top film honors.
Drama A Beautiful Mind and musical Moulin Rouge followed with eight each, and seven went to a movie that mixes both drama and comedy, Gosford Park. The fifth film in the category for best motion picture was another drama, In the Bedroom, which garnered five nominations.
For the most part, an Oscar nod means a "box office bounce" for current films, but down the road nominations also translate into higher sales for related products like video and DVD, film industry executives said after Tuesday's announcement.
"The best picture nomination, more than anything, allows you to go to many more screens because there is such a flood of publicity that continues from here to the Oscars," said Miramax Films' marketing co-chairman David Brooks.
A prime example of a film that received a big Oscar "bounce" was 1998's Shakespeare in Love. The Miramax release opened to little fanfare in December but its box-office take built on good reviews, early awards, 13 Oscar nominations and its subsequent seven wins, including best picture and best actress for Gwyneth Paltrow. Before Oscar nominations, its domestic box office was $36 million, but by the time its Oscar run ended, it had reached $100 million, according to box office tracker AC Nielsen/EDI.
Industry watchers said lower-profile films like Bedroom, Gosford Park and Monster's Ball, for which Halle Berry received a best actress nod, should see a bigger box-office jump than major films like Rings or Beautiful Mind.
"It helps any movie, but if it's one that might have been perceived as non-mainstream, it gives it a stamp of validation that helps transform it into a mainstream movie," said Scott Greenstein, chairman of Gosford Park studio USA Films.
For films like Rings, with $271 million in domestic box office, and Beautiful Mind, with $113 million, much of the Oscar bounce has likely flattened out because of their popularity.
Rings already "was a huge phenomenon, and a nomination does more to maintain its momentum and blunt its gradual fall-off," said Tom Borys, president of AC Nielsen/EDI. "Beautiful Mind is close to Lord of the Rings."
The bounce doesn't extend only to the box office, and is more of a step to a higher level for video and DVD sales. For Rouge, which debuted last summer, a nomination "is more about what happens in the after-life," Borys said.
Most of a movie's promotional spending occurs in initial release when its reputation is cemented with movie fans. If a film performs well at the box office, gets rave reviews, Oscar nominations and wins, fans remember it in the future.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., for instance, shipped 2 million videos and DVDs of serial killer thriller The Silence of the Lambs last year, 10 years after it won best picture.
Much of that was spurred by the 2001 sequel, Hannibal, and a paired set of videos and DVDs of Lambs and Hannibal. But there's no argument in Hollywood that if Lambs had not been a big Oscar winner, fewer movie fans would have remembered it 10 years after it first appeared on the silver screen.
Examples go back to Disney's 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It broke creative ground in terms of animation and earned Walt Disney an honorary Oscar. Snow White remains one of Disney's best-selling videos of all time, and this fall sales of its DVD surpassed company expectations.
The Oscar bounce points to one reason studios spend heavily on Oscar campaigns during awards season, roughly December to March, in which they boost newspaper and TV advertising, send out videos and hold special screenings for Oscar voters.
This year's Oscar spending has been up by as much as 20 percent, according to published reports, but Hollywood studios and insiders do not disclose such spending figures.
The season is important for a film like Monster's Ball, a racially charged drama distributed by independent studio Lions Gate Entertainment. But for Oscar recognition, Monster's Ball might get muscled out of a crowded market.
"We knew we could get Monster's opened successfully Feb. 8, but we timed it so that four days later -- hopefully after a couple of major nominations -- we could take advantage of that second wave of publicity," said Tom Ortenberg, president of film releasing for Lions Gate.
Before filmgoers get too cynical, Ortenberg points out that promotional spending still can't make a bad movie good.
"Oscars are about movies, not campaigns. ... Many studios run brilliant Academy campaigns, but the most important thing is they have to have the good movies to back them up," he said.
As always, Oscar has Hollywood's final say on the best movies. This year's ceremony takes place March 24.
USA is part of USA Networks Inc., which is merging with French media conglomerate Vivendi Universal . Miramax is owned by The Walt Disney Co.
Rings was produced and distributed by New Line Cinema, a division of AOL Time Warner Inc.; Beautiful Mind by Universal Studios, a unit of Vivendi; and Moulin Rouge by 20th Century Fox, a part of News Corp. Ltd.
© 2002 Reuters/Variety REUTERS