(L-R) Jack Quaid, Florence Pugh, Ellen Mirojnick, Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Ludwig Göransson, Charles Roven, Robert Downey Jr., Luisa Abel, Emma Thomas, Hoyte van Hoytema, Ruth De Jong, Christopher Nolan, Josh Hartnett, Ashley Everett and Claire Kaufman accept the Best Picture award for "Oppenheimer" onstage during the 96th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California.
Plenty of $1 billion box office hits have been nominated for best picture, but Academy voters have tended to opt for smaller, specialty fare when handing out the top rize. Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer upended the traditional order Sunday night when it won best picture at Oscars 2024, one of seven wins for the historical biopic.
The film has reaped north of $957 million at the worldwide box office, the top gross of any best picture victor since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004 (that film grossed $1.15 billion). Oppenheimer is also the first best picture winner in more than a decade to earn north of $100 million at the domestic box office since Ben Affeck’s Argo (that pic earned $136 million domestically and $232.3 million globally.) And it’s the first best picture winner released in July — the heart of summer movie season — since Forest Gump in 1994.
