NEW YORK — If there was any doubt, the first few days of Hollywood's end-of-year awards have already made it clear: the Paul Thomas Anderson Award “One battle after another” is an Oscar favorite.
On Monday, “One Battle After Another” won best film in the competition. 35th Gotham Awards. On Tuesday, the New York Film Critics Circle named it best picture. It won the National Board of Review Awards on Wednesday, winning best picture, best director for Anderson and acting awards for Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and newcomer Chase Infinity.
Be prepared to hear this pun often: one reward after another.
“I actually didn’t expect it,” Anderson said on “Gotham.” “I started to think I didn’t understand what was going on.”
This may be the first and last time Anderson gets to say that this awards season.
“One battle after another” the father-daughter story of political resistance in the face of repeated oppression firmly established itself as a film of its time. Anderson's opus, whose opening scene depicts a raid on an immigration detention center, has struck critics and moviegoers alike with its relevance in the first year of President Donald Trump's second term. Even the film's detractors, such as conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, predicted it would “win every Academy Award.”
Yet Anderson's film is, in many ways, an Academy Award-winning oddity. It's a critically acclaimed film that didn't make it to film festivals. It's a big-budget studio film that wasn't a hit. In fact, if One Battle After Another wins the Oscars on March 15, it could become one of the few underdogs to ever win the industry's top award.
Smaller films are increasingly winning best picture awards. This includes indie films like “The Hurt Locker,” “Moonlight” and “Nomadland”—highly acclaimed films with meager box office returns. Hollywood has long been accustomed to giving credit to films that exist largely outside of its core, franchise-obsessed business. And the concept of what constitutes a best film has become flexible. “Parasite”,“Everything everywhere and at once” and the last winner, “Anora” all shook up traditional notions of Oscar material.
But even the smallest Oscar winners have had commercial success. Even “CODA” The pandemic-era 2022 winner, which went straight to streaming, was a big win for the then-nascent Apple TV. Historically, Hollywood loves to reward winners.
“One Battle After Another” represents something different. With a production budget of at least $130 million (some reports have it much higher) and another $70 million in marketing costs, it will have to live an extraordinary post-theater life to break even. Currently released by Warner Bros. It grossed $70.6 million domestically and $131.6 million overseas, an excellent total for an R-rated, adult-oriented auteur film that runs nearly three hours.
Still, Variety previously assessed One Battle After Another will lose $100 million, a figure that Warner Bros. disputes. It's too harsh a label, but because of this inconsistency, One Battle After Another can be called the first best picture to fail.
Awards season is upon us. None of the awards handed out this week have a direct connection to academy voters. Some contenders, like A24's Marty Supreme, have yet to hit theaters. Others such as Focus Features “Hamnet” are just arriving. Support is also strong for another Warner Bros. title, Ryan Coogler's. “Sinners” which may give One Battle After Another its toughest competition yet. Both films return to IMAX screens on December 12th.
But negative profits are far from the only cross that will have to be endured this fall. In addition to launching blockbusters “Zootopia 2” And “Wicked: For Good” Waves of potential awards contenders – films like “Wrecking Machine,” “Bloodman” and “Christie” – have failed to find ticket buyers. It was a grueling fall for a wide range of contenders, a context that makes One Battle After Another a relatively runaway success.
In fact, the biggest financial obstacle to it is that it is very expensive to produce—perhaps too expensive. At a time when so few films like One Battle After Another get greenlit, let alone with budgets like these, the cost of One Battle After Another could even be seen as a badge of honor. Here's a film that will win, lose or draw in the battle for a kind of filmmaking industry under siege. To quote Bob Ferguson from DiCaprio: “Long live the revolution!”
