‘Argo,’ ‘Lincoln’ Oscar favorites

Statuettes in the likeness of the Oscar award are displayed across the street from the Hollywood and Highland complex in Los Angeles. AP

LOS ANGELES—Giant coffee table books, iPod Shuffles, signed letters from directors, even “Lincoln” turkey roasting pans.

That’s just some of the largesse doled out by the studios to voters for awards presented earlier this season—each with the potential to influence the outcome of Hollywood’s most important awards, Sunday night’s Oscars.

Such gifts are strictly forbidden by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But for studios, the stakes are high, and they’ve been creative in working around the rules to give their movies the best spotlight possible.

(The awards ceremony is expected to begin at 0130 GMT—9:30 a.m., Monday, in Manila).

This year, top Oscar contenders “Argo” from Warner Bros. and “Lincoln” from Disney pitted two deep-pocketed rivals against each other in what some say was an unprecedented level of Oscar campaigning. There was even some targeted sniping about the films’ bending of historical facts.

Part of what’s behind the seemingly unrestrained lobbying is that this year, an unusually large number of best picture nominees are also doing well at the box office, giving the studios dry powder for their campaigns.

Ticket sales: $309M

Six of the nine contenders for the top Oscar have reaped $100 million or more in ticket sales domestically, and collectively they’ve earned $309 million since the nominations on Jan. 10, according to Hollywood.com.

This record-setting “Oscar bump” dwarfs the $111 million the nine best picture nominees made between the nominations and the awards ceremony last year. It also trumps the season that 2009’s mega-hit “Avatar” was in the running, when 10 nominees brought in $204 million in bump.

That means there’s plenty of reason for studios to keep spending—even to the extent of papering the walls of the popular Beverly Hills restaurant Kate Mantilini with campaign posters, which conveniently tower over diners just a block from the motion picture academy itself.

“I have never seen such an assault in terms of stuff being sent to us,” said Pete Hammond, a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, which hosts the Critics Choice Awards.

Hammond is one of several voters for the earlier awards where wins translate into momentum for Oscar hopefuls. They say their mailboxes were swamped with swag this year—all of it an attempt to reach the 5,800 academy members who vote on the Oscars, albeit through indirect means.

From the campaign of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” members of the broadcast critics group say they received no less than four coffee table books, an intricately framed DVD for review purposes, and even a hand-signed letter from Spielberg himself, thanking them for recognizing the film with so many nominations.

Some awards voters also received “Lincoln” turkey roasting pans, according to an industry insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The broadcast critics also received an iPod Shuffle, which retails for $49, containing the soundtrack to Universal Pictures’ “Les Miserables,” which is up for music and sound mixing awards.

Several voters said this level of giveaway was unusual, but then again, in recent times, well-funded major studios haven’t been that involved.

In the last two years, the movie industry’s top honor went to The Weinstein Co.’s “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech.” Previous to that, 2009’s winner was “The Hurt Locker,” whose backer Summit Entertainment was just starting to get its “Twilight” mojo and was yet to be flush with cash.

Before that, it was Fox Searchlight’s “Slumdog Millionaire” and before that, “No Country for Old Men” by Paramount Vantage—both smaller arms of major studios that have smaller marketing budgets than their larger siblings.

This year, the majors are back in the game in a big way. In addition to Warner’s “Argo” and Disney’s “Lincoln,” Sony Pictures is behind “Zero Dark Thirty,” 20th Century Fox is backing “Life of Pi” and Universal is the force behind “Les Miserables.”

While The Weinstein Co.’s “Silver Linings Playbook” is earning boffo business above $100 million in ticket sales following cochairman Harvey Weinstein’s familiar script of making the most of awards season, it appears that this year, the majors have studied up.

“Nobody ever did it besides Harvey, and now everybody’s done it this year,” said David Poland of MovieCityNews.com, which means more intense campaigning because there’s more money to spend.

One look at the release pattern of “Zero Dark Thirty” and it’s clear that Sony didn’t want to repeat what happened to “The Hurt Locker,” another Kathryn Bigelow-directed war film that despite its best picture win, made just $19 million in theaters worldwide.

Instead, “ZDT” showed in just a handful of theaters in December to qualify for the 2012 Oscars, but burst onto 3,000 theaters the day after the nominations in January, capturing the top spot at the box office that weekend.

“We designed our release campaign to take advantage of key dates in the awards season,” said Sony Pictures spokesman Steve Elzer. “With approximately $90 million in box office to date, the film has been a huge critical and commercial success and no matter how we do at the Oscar ceremony on Sunday, we couldn’t be more pleased with the film’s performance.”