BuzzFeed analyzed data on all Best Picture winners since the 1930s to find the perfect Oscar bait. It should be a drama with “night” in the title.
Get $41 million.
In an original data analysis, BuzzFeed looked at the Oscar winners for Best Picture since the 1930s and adjusted all their budgets for inflation. The average budget of a Best Picture winner, in 2013 dollars, is $41 million. So that should be all you need to get started.
Source: that-swag-life
Find a dramatic script (stay away from comedies).
Over half the Best Picture winners have been dramas, so sticking to that genre will increase your odds. Your worst bet: musicals, which have won only 9% of the time.
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Sign Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.
They are the living actors with most Best Actor or Actress nominations — she has 12, he has 8. They both each have two wins, also the most of any living actor. Others with two: Jodie Foster, Hillary Swank, Sally Field, Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hire them all and make it an ensemble!
Image by Christopher Polk / Getty Images
Don't make it too long.
Contrary to what you might think, extra-long epics don't do especially well in the Oscar race — just 12% have been over three hours long. Sixty-five percent have been 150 minutes or shorter.
