2026 Oscar Best Picture Nominees Ranked By Box Office

We're firmly in awards season now. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has weighed in on the year's best movies, with the full list of 2026 Oscars Nominations recently revealed. All eyes are now on the Best Picture race, which will be decided during the ceremony in March. Naturally, the biggest question is which movie will come out on top. But what movie came out on top at the box office? That's a question we can answer right here, right now.

As has been customary for quite some time now, the Oscars' Best Picture race includes 10 movies released in 2025. The Oscars' Best Picture category expanded to 10 nominees in 2009, in no small part because Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" failed to earn a nod. Now, blockbusters more regularly find their way into the group of nominees. So, how did this year's crop of selections do in theaters? Let's break it down, from first to worst.

A few quick notes: the following numbers are worldwide box office figures. We're not just looking at domestic numbers. These numbers are also as of this writing. Many of these movies are still in theaters, still expanding, or will be getting re-releases in the coming weeks, so these figures will change. This is designed to offer a snapshot of how things look from a financial POV. Here's how it shakes out:

1. "F1" – $631.7 million (Apple Original Films)

2. "Sinners" – $368.2 million (Warner Bros.)

3. "One Battle After Another" – $206.3 million (Warner Bros.)

4. "Marty Supreme" – $96 million (A24)

5. "Bugonia" – $41.1 million (Focus Features)

6. "Hamnet" – $28.1 million (Focus Features)

7. "Sentimental Value" – $16 million (NEON)

8. "The Secret Agent" – $5.7 million (NEON)

9. "Frankenstein" – N/A (Netflix)

10. "Train Dreams" – N/A (Netflix)

While Netflix will be getting into the box office in a meaningful way if/when they buy Warner Bros., for the moment, the world's largest streaming service only releases movies on a limited basis. They also don't report box office grosses. So, even though "Frankenstein" and "Train Dreams" were playing in theaters, they don't have any meaningful numbers to speak of.

As for the rest, Warner Bros. clearly came out on top here. Even though "F1," the Brad Pitt racing drama from director Joseph Kosinski ("Top Gun: Maverick"), was made by Apple, WB handled theatrical distribution. So they occupy the top three spots. Those are also the only certifiable blockbusters on this list. Even director Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle Another" was still a big box office bomb given its huge budget, but was a relative win given that acclaimed dramas rarely make much money in theaters these days.

To that end, most of the dramas on this list have yet to cross the $50 million mark globally, with "Marty Supreme" doing the most business. That one still has a lot of gas in the tank, but it also carries a huge $70 million price tag, meaning A24 still needs Timothee Chalamet's star power to put a lot of butts in seats to make it an outright financial winner.

All the same, director Josh Safdie's table tennis dramedy will be a $100 million movie very soon, and that helps bring another movie the general public actually seems to care about to the party.

That's not to say that people don't care about the likes of "Bugonia" or "Frankenstein," which did very well on Netflix, but this list is devoid of big box office hits relative to other more recent years. 2025 had five Best Picture nominees that made more than $60 million by the time the nominations arrived, with two movies that cleared $700 million, both "Wicked" and "Dune: Part Two."

2024 was even better, with "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" in the mix. "Oppenheimer" made nearly $1 billion and won Best Picture, becoming the first outright blockbuster to take home the prize in decades. The fact of the matter is that the Oscars have struggled to stay relevant in recent years, with viewership struggling and largely stagnating. Getting movies that people care about in the mix can help generate interest from more casual viewers.

The Oscars remain important because it's a big reason why Focus Features will give Yorgos Lanthimos money to make "Bugonia." Granted, they were probably hoping for another $100 million hit like "Poor Things," but that's not how things shook out this time around.

Overall, it's a decent mix of popular movies and more acclaimed, niche titles. Unfortunately, "F1" has little shot at the top prize. It's also hard not to notice that "Wicked: For Good" and "Avatar: Fire and Ash" were shut out of the Best Picture race, which would have provided one or two huge blockbusters in the mix. The hope is that the nominations will give a boost to movies like "Sentimental Value," "The Secret Agent," and "Hament." We'll see how it shakes out.

The 2026 Academy Awards air Sunday, March 15, on ABC and Hulu.