Why that $18 million ‘Anora’ Oscars campaign isn’t as big of a deal as you might think
When Sean Baker’s drama Anora swept the 2025 Oscars, winning five out of the six categories for which it was nominated, all anyone wanted to talk about, it seemed, was the triumph of independent cinema. At just $6million, Anora’s budget paled in comparison to the $100million that it cost to make the previous year’s ‘Best Picture’ winner Oppenheimer.
What that tiny budget does not account for, however, is the millions of dollars that went into its awards campaign. Many film fans would like to believe that Oscars are won purely on merit (or the organic opinions of the Academy), but there is a carefully orchestrated system of campaigning that goes into it. The aggressiveness and professionalism of 21st-century awards campaigning can be traced back to Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood’s real-life villain who, among much worse crimes, turned the Oscars race into a well-oiled machine on par with the most grossly exorbitant political election.
Neon, the distribution company that ran Anora’s awards race, forked over approximately $18 million for the campaign alone. Traditionally, the tactics for distributors and studios involve lavish parties with movie stars and wall-to-wall ‘For your consideration’ ads. But Neon took a more creative route, sending physical copies of the film to Academy voters and setting up a pop-up shop in Los Angeles that sold Anora-themed T-shirts and thongs.
“We follow the beat of our own drum,” Neon’s CEO Tom Quinn said in an interview with Variety. “The idea of pandering to the campaign as opposed to being who you are as a film is a big, stark difference. We never play to the campaign. We always play to the film, filmmaker, and audience — in that order.”
It was a clever strategy, and it might have caught the attention of Academy voters in a way that the traditional methods couldn’t. Sending DVDs of the film to voters was a primary example. “Whether or not anybody uses the DVD, that cover, I think showcases the art, is another enticement to convince people to sit down and watch your movie,” Quinn said in an interview on the podcast The Town with Matthew Belloni.
The Academy has tried to clamp down on the escalating methods of Oscar campaigners over the years. There is even a 12-page document of regulations that every campaign team must follow. However, most of the rules revolve around social media and undue influence, such as Oscar hopefuls bad-mouthing fellow nominees on social media or throwing lavish, unsanctioned parties. In this way, it has diminished the type of relentless coercion that Weinstein used to, for example, turn Shakespeare in Love into a seven-time Oscar winner regardless of whether it was deserving.
It would be easy to look at the cost of Anora’s campaign and feel some dissonance with all the David and Goliath rhetoric surrounding the film’s Oscar success, but the truth is, organic sentiment does play a surprisingly large role in the process. Consider, for example, Netflix’s increasingly desperate and unsuccessful attempts to win big. In 2019, the streamer dropped an astonishing $40 million into the campaign for Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, and while it did earn three Oscars, it lost the majority of its 10 nominations, including the ultimate goal of ‘Best Picture.’
Similarly, although there were significant extenuating circumstances, 2024’s Emilia Pérez only managed to take home two out of 13 awards for which it was nominated. Meanwhile, Universal’s Wicked was nominated for 10 awards and went home with two despite carpet bombing the airwaves with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande tearfully clutching fingers and holding space for each other.
In short, all that money can only get you so far, specifically as far as a hoard of nominations, if you’re lucky (Angelina Jolie, despite an extensive early campaign, did not get a ‘Best Actress’ nomination this year for Maria). It’s safe to say that Anora won nearly all the major Oscar categories this year not because of that $18 million campaign, which was probably in keeping with most of the other nominees – but because it was the film that the Academy viewers decided to watch and ultimately liked the most. The price of entry into the Oscar race might not make you feel warm and fuzzy about Tinseltown, but at least the era of Harvey Weinstein strong-arming his way into Oscar wins is behind us.
