Approximately 41.3 million people in the US watched the 2010 Oscars on Sunday, up 14% on last year and the best audience for the awards show in five years.
Sunday night’s surge in viewing for the 82nd Academy Awards can probably be attributed to the nine nominations garnered by Avatar even though it only won three awards, losing out in the best picture and best director categories to The Hurt Locker.
The uncertain outcome of the contest between Avatar’s director, James Cameron, and his ex-wife, The Hurt Locker’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, meant the three-and-a-half-hour-long ceremony was more popular than last year’s Oscars, when Slumdog Millionaire dominated the awards.
You can’t tell me that the challenge of directing The Hurt Locker even comes close to than directing Avatar. It always kills me how some independent film that hardly anyone saw turns out winning. I think that Cameron WAS the best director of the BEST movie, Avatar.
I predict that viewership will drop again next year to levels below that of the 2009 awards show.
Yes, the only reason we watched this year was to see how Avatar fared when they handed out the awards. The people of America and the world voted with their pocket-books for Avatar, which grossed $720,607,444 domestically as of 3/7/10. Hurt locker grossed about $14,700,000 and was released almost six month sooner than Avatar. The graph below tells it all.
Tags: Art, Entertainment, Stupid
