LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The main contenders for this year's top movie awards are cashing in at the box office on last week's Oscar nominations, just as studios launched a publicity blitz in the run-up to the coveted prizes.
Hot favorites for the best picture Academy Award, The Lord of the Rings and A Beautiful Mind, saw their audiences soar by 38 and 35 percent respectively during the US long weekend, box office trackers said.
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring led last week's nominations by scooping up 13 nods including best picture, best leading actor and best director, while Mind scored eight tying with musical Moulin Rouge.
Mind even jumped a place in the North American rankings to sixth from seventh place by taking an estimated 9.7 million dollars last weekend, according to preliminary figures released by Investor Relations Inc. on Sunday.
Rings, based on the classic books by J.R.R. Tolkien, remained in 11th place but saw its weekly takings jump to an expected five million dollars last weekend from 3.61 million a week earlier -- an increase of around 38 percent.
Drama In the Bedroom saw its ticket receipts double to an estimated 2.5 million dollars, while grosses for 1930s murder mystery Gosford Park -- which won seven nods -- soared 30 percent to 2.45 million dollars.
Only combat drama Black Hawk Down, which scored a disappointing four nominations, saw its standing fall from fourth to eighth place with 7.4 million dollars.
"Oscar nominations almost always mean renewed audience interest in the film," said Tim Gray of Variety Daily magazine.
But the anxious Hollywood movie studios were not taking any chances with the Oscar winning potential of their films, launching major publicity campaigns aimed both at boosting audiences and influencing Academy Award voters.
Miramax studios pushed its main Oscar hopeful In the Bedroom, which won five Oscar nods including best actress for Sissy Spacek's role as a distraught housewife, in both the trade and the mainstream press at the weekend.
New Line Cinema made a similar gambit on behalf of Lord of the Rings, a risky 170 million gamble that appears to be paying off, as did Universal Pictures, which produced Mind and took out a full page ad for the film in the New York Times and other publications.
France's foreign picture hopeful Amelie -- which has five nominations -- dark comedy The Royal Tenenbaums and racially- charged drama Monster's Ball were all also the subjects of advertising campaigns.
"They are going to spend between 50 and 60 million dollars this year in Hollywood to buy an award that is only gold plated and is worth just 400 dollars," said Oscars author Tom O'Neil.
He noted that the advertising could pay off in the long run, if only by keeping particular films in the minds of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 5,700 voters.
"They are stubborn, these voters," O'Neil said. "They are not going to be told what to do, but you can buy their attention," he said, noting that in the past that good films which did launch major publicity blitzes following their nominations have sometimes lost out.
© 2002 AFP