Hopes that Sinners and One Battle After Another would bring in a big audience dashed as viewers fell to 17.9m, a 9% drop on last year’s 19.7m
Hopes had been high that the popularity of big hitters Sinners and One Battle After Another would translate into a bigger audience for the Oscars ceremony telecast. Yet numbers hit a four-year-low in the US, where the show reached 17.9 million viewers on ABC and Hulu, down about 9% from last year’s 19.7 million.
Many had presumed the five-year high that 2025 represented was the product of interest in cinema bouncing back post-Covid – all the more cheering given that the movie that dominated, Sean Baker’s Anora, had not been a major box office player.
That film took $20m in the US – a very healthy total for an arthouse release, but small change compared with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners’ $280m and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle’s $72m.
One Battle After Another has overperformed internationally, bringing its global total to $210m, while Sinners landed softer overseas with a worldwide total of $370m.
