This is In Conversation from Apple News.
I'm Sam Sanders, in for Shumita Basu.
Today, how the Oscars actually work.
And why we still love them anyway.
At last year's Oscars, a small independent film called Onora won Best Picture.
On stage, producer Alex Coco...
underscored just how small that film's budget was compared to a lot of other nominees.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you to the Academy.
We made this movie for $6 million.
What Coco didn't mention is how much more money the Anora team spent to win its Oscars.
Behind the scenes, the marketing, distribution,
and awards campaign for Anora reportedly cost around $18 million.
That's almost three times the film's production budget.
Awards season isn't just about making the art.
It's about strategy, months of screenings, Q&As,
festival stops, for-your-consideration ads, private receptions.
And this is all aimed at a relatively small group of people,
the roughly 11,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Turns out, Anora's price tag is not that unusual.