Monthly Archives: March 2025

The Oscar Bump Is Broken. Now What?

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 02: (L-R) Alex Coco, Sean Baker, and Samantha Quan, winners of the Best Picture for “Anora”, pose in the press room during the 97th Annual Oscars at Ovation Hollywood on March 02, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

An independent film just won big. That’s not new.

Anora took five Oscars, including Best Picture. Sean Baker’s film beat out blockbusters and studio darlings. That used to mean a box office surge.

But two weeks later, Anora will be on Hulu.

That is new.

The “Oscar bump” once meant millions. A small film could double its ticket sales. Word of mouth spread. People who had never heard of a movie bought tickets. Theater chains added showtimes. Studios extended runs. A Best Picture win was a second wind.

But the wind has shifted.

Now, Anora will land on streaming before most people have even heard of it. It will sit next to sitcom reruns, reality shows, and whatever the algorithm shuffles forward. There is no scarcity. No urgency. Theaters have no time to rebook the film. There is no second wind.

So what is an Oscar worth?

Studios once spent millions for an award season push. The prestige translated to ticket sales. Then home video. Then DVD and Blu-ray. Even streaming, in its early days, treated Best Picture winners as special. Now, the model has changed.

Now, Anora is in the same boat. Its moment of victory came with no economic ripple. Theaters won’t benefit. The studio won’t see a sudden wave of ticket buyers. The audience won’t feel like they discovered something rare.

In 2019, Parasite won Best Picture. Its box office shot up $40 million after the win. That was the last true Oscar bump. By 2021, Nomadland won, but it was already on Hulu. It barely moved the needle. CODA won in 2022, but it was an Apple TV+ exclusive. It never had a real theatrical presence. The Oscar didn’t change that.

What’s left?

Glory.

That is what the Academy Award now offers. Not a box office bump, not a long theatrical run, not a surge in physical media sales. Just a footnote in film history.

That’s not nothing. For independent filmmakers, it’s still the biggest prize in Hollywood.

But the business has changed. If Oscars no longer boost revenue, how long will studios care? If a Best Picture winner drops on streaming two weeks after its victory, what does the victory even mean?

That is the question now.

Anora won big. It will be on Hulu soon. And in a world where content floods every screen, it might vanish just as fast.

Unyielding

Unyielding

Tell me—
what is love if not the teeth bared,
the breath held, the earth rushing up
to meet your refusal?

What is devotion if not the leap—
not graceful, not careful,
but certain?

There is no calculation in love,
only the knowing:
this is mine to hold,
this is mine to keep safe.

And so,
with the sky against me,
with the wind cutting through,
I do.

The First VCR: Fridge-sized Fortune


In the 1950s, long before they were compact and more affordable, the earliest VCRs took up as much space as a piano and cost more than a house. We can trace the technology to engineer Charles Ginsburg, who was hired by electronics company Ampex to work on the development of a new video tape recorder (VTR). The resulting machine, called the Ampex VRX-1000, debuted in 1956 and allowed users to edit and play back recorded video on tape reels. However, these devices were humongous and cost roughly $50,000 (around $580,000 today), making them out of reach for personal use. Instead, Ampex found a market in large television networks such as CBS, which used the VRX-1000 to replace costly live broadcasts with prerecorded, edited content that could be re-aired.

The personal VCR market developed further into the 1960s, starting with the work of Sony engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, who unveiled the CV-2000 in 1965. This was a smaller and more affordable device priced at $695 (around $7,000 today), capable of recording and playing back black-and-white images. But the CV-2000 still relied on tape reels; it wasn’t until 1971 that the first VCR to use cassettes debuted. This was the Sony VO-1600, which incorporated Sony’s new U-matic technology, in which the tape was encased inside a cassette — a direct predecessor to modern VHS tapes. The retail price of the Sony VO-1600 was still in excess of $1,000. But as the technology continued to develop throughout the 1980s, the cost of a new VCR dipped into the low hundreds.

Now I want mine back.