Cash-Strapped Studios Spend Big on Oscars

Pricey ads run for contenders despite industry layoffs
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 20, 2008 10:00 AM CST
Cash-Strapped Studios Spend Big on Oscars
"It%u2019s like something out of 'My Man Godfrey' or one of those depression era comedies," one Hollywood marketing maven said of 'Benjamin Button's' black-tie premiere. "It could not be more wrong."   (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

America's financial crisis hasn't stopped studios from dropping big money in their quest for Oscars, Nikki Finke writes on Deadline Hollywood Daily. Amid layoffs and cutbacks, Paramount took out 7 full-page ads for Revolutionary Road in the New York Times, and Disney spent $675,000 for a Wall-E insert in the LA Times. "So a $675,000 insert is falling out of newspapers sent to 1 in 10 homes in foreclosure," one insider said.

"It's so unbelievably pretentious and self-promoting and self-aggrandizing that I just can't not comment on it," said one recipient of a making-of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button coffee table book. Paramount placed a double-page spread promoting Button in Variety the same day the Viacom layoffs were announced, Finke notes, for a cost of around $250,000—or about 5 assistants' salaries. (More Oscars stories.)

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