FiscalFusion

NEW YORK — If there were any doubt, the first few days of Hollywood’s year-end awards have already made it abundantly clear: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is the Oscar front-runner. On Monday, the film won best picture at the 35th Gotham Awards. On Tuesday, it was named best film by the New York Film Critics Circle. On Wednesday, it swept the National Board of Review Awards, taking best film, best director for Anderson, and acting honors for Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and newcomer Chase Infiniti. Expect to hear this pun a lot: one award after another. “I didn’t expect this, actually,” Anderson said at the Gothams.

“I started to think I didn’t know what was going on.” That may be the first and last time he can say that this season. “One Battle After Another,” a father-daughter tale of political resistance, has become the movie of the moment. Its opening scene — a raid at an immigrant detention facility — has resonated strongly in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. Even critics of the film, like conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, have predicted it will “win all the Academy Awards.” Yet it is also an Oscar anomaly: a major studio release that skipped festivals, underperformed at the box office and cost a fortune. If it wins best picture on March 15, it may be one of the rare money-losers to take Hollywood’s top prize. Smaller films like “The Hurt Locker,” “Moonlight” and “Nomadland” have dominated best picture in recent years, but even those were commercial successes or major streaming wins.

“One Battle After Another,” with a production budget of at least $130 million and another $70 million in marketing, has made $70.6 million domestically and $131.6 million internationally — strong for an R-rated, three-hour auteur film, but not enough to guarantee profitability. Variety has estimated a possible $100 million loss, a claim Warner Bros. disputes, raising the prospect that it could become the first best-picture-winning “flop.” Awards season is far from settled. Upcoming contenders include A24’s “Marty Supreme” and Focus Features’ “Hamnet,” while Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” — also from Warner Bros. — may be its strongest challenger. Both films return to IMAX screens December 12.

Still, compared with a fall box-office slump that sank films like “The Smashing Machine,” “Roofman” and “Christy,” Anderson’s film is practically a breakout hit. Its greatest financial liability is simply its cost — an unusually large budget for the kind of adult-driven prestige film Hollywood rarely bankrolls anymore. For many, that scale is a badge of honor. Win or lose, “One Battle After Another” stands as a defiant entry in a style of filmmaking increasingly under threat. Or, in the words of DiCaprio’s character Bob Ferguson: “Viva la revolution!”.