Leo’s red carpet rampage is paying off – on social media. The actor and his Oscar-nominated film The Revenant dominated pre-Oscars discussion on Facebook.
The biggest date in the film calendar is almost upon us. The 88th Academy Awards take place this Sunday 28th February at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Entertainment, much like sport, has universal appeal and the Oscars are a major talking point on social. We decided to take a look at which films, actors and filmmakers clocked up the most engagements ahead of the event.
All the data comes from NewsWhip’s database. For this piece, we looked at Facebook engagement around the names in question over the period 1st – 23rd February. To do this, we used NewsWhip’s database to measure the the total likes, shares, and comments English articles mentioning the actor or film over the those dates.
Here’s what we found:
- The Revenant led the way among the Best Picture nominees, with 546,083 engagements, over double its nearest rival.
- Leonardo DiCaprio dominated social headlines this month. Articles mentioning the actor generated almost 1.8 million engagements in this period, three times more than any other actor.
- BBC News, Empire Magazine and Entertainment Weekly were among the most-engaged Oscars publishers.
Best Picture: The Revenant escapes to victory
Matching its frontrunner position at the awards themselves, The Revenant notched up 546,083 engagements on Facebook over the course of the month. DiCaprio’s profile will have boosted this, but it helps that the film is a relatively recent release compared to some of the names on the list. Second-placed The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road were both in cinemas several months ago, whereas The Revenant is still fresh in many cinema goers’ memories. The film also picked up five gongs at the recent BAFTA awards in London, cementing its Oscars buzz.
The Martian, a critical darling starring multiple famous names, elicited an impressive 200,136 engagements. Fury Road earned 89,995, no mean feat considering it’s been nearly 10 months since the film was released. Both of these pictures enjoyed wide international distribution which has likely won them a greater audience than some of other names in the list.
Best Actor: It’s Oscar season everywhere and in his heart
If Oscars were handed out for popularity on social, DiCaprio would have had his award long ago. The actor is a popular presence for his activism as well as acting and enjoys a significant online following (his Twitter account alone has over 14.2 million followers). His lengthy campaign to win an Academy Award is the source of much enthusiasm among audiences, with some already planning celebration events should he finally take home the Best Actor gong on Sunday.
Combining male and female (leading) actors, here are the top 5 for this month:
DiCaprio’s patented position in the hearts of moviegoers worldwide earned him 1,786,549 engagements on Facebook so far this month. This is more than three times the amount generated by second-placed actor and fellow megastar Jennifer Lawrence. The biggest article on DiCaprio for this period was an in-depth piece in Rolling Stone, which notched up 10,907 engagements alone. The actor’s numbers also benefited from the multitude of articles analysing The Revenant itself, with one Indian Country opinion piece on the film earning 12,575 interactions.
Matt Damon, nominated for The Martian, fell just short of Lawrence’s numbers with 519,696 mentions. Brie Larson (Room) and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) round out the top five. Their lower numbers may reflect the more niche profiles of the films for which they’re nominated. The overall consensus seems to be that 2016 is DiCaprio’s year, and audiences on social are ensuring the moment shall not go unnoticed (with some providing a more humorous take on things).
Screenshot via redcarpetrampage.com
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The BBC, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Empire magazine all figure prominently in the top publishers for Oscars related content in this period. The BBC’s report on the BAFTAs had 21,071 interactions on Facebook, making it the most successful piece for this period. An Entertainment Weekly piece arguing that Fury Road deserves to win Best Picture yielded 19,990 engagements to become the second-biggest. Other actors figuring in the top 10 stories include Mark Ruffalo, whose interview with Empire magazine generated 8,100 engagements.
Interestingly, one key issue is largely absent from the top stories for this period: the Oscars boycott. Several filmmakers called for a boycott of the awards due to a lack of diversity and the ensuing debate was widely reported. However, the only piece covering this issue in the top 25 is an article from Native News.
Best Director: Historic on the Fury Road
The one area in which The Revenant doesn’t take the social gong is directing. Fury Road helmer George Miller had by far the most mentions of the five Best Director nominees, with 36,061 in total in the period we looked at. This is almost twice as many as second-placed Adam McKay (nominated for The Big Short), who drove 18,754 engagements. The Revenant’s Alejandro González Iñárritu comes third with a total of 17,564.
The enormous engagement generated by the Oscars reflects the interest and reach a major entertainment event can have. We’ll be checking back on this after the ceremony itself – in the meantime, why not sign up for a free Spike trial and track all the big stories on the night? You can also send us your thoughts on contact[at]newswhip[dot]com or follow us on Twitter.
