The Academy Award for Best Picture is arguably one of the most coveted awards in the movie industry.

It is not surprising to see movie producers aspire for that prestigious award. Some of the past notable winners have included movies like The Sound of Music, Ben Hur, The Godfather II & III, Slumdog Millionaire, etc.

According to the Academy, for a movie to be nominated, it must fulfill specific criteria, including having a running length of more than 40 minutes and other specifics related to how, where, and when it’s screened.

With streaming sites gaining a foothold in the movie business, this analysis looks at the last five editions of the Best Picture category to determine whether an unusual pattern is emerging.

Since 2016, the 43 movies nominated for the category have a combined budget of about US$1.7 billion. While it is actual movies are generally an expensive venture, it was interesting to note out of these five editions, the combined budget for the past winners stood at US$313m, about 18 percent of the combined budget of all movies over the period.

The most expensive to have won the category was Black Panther in 2018, which cost more than US$200m – taking up a considerable chunk of the budget of all the winners. It is also striking to note that, in the past five years save 2018, all the winning movies had the lowest budget among their respective nomination groups.

While this list may not be sufficient to form any conclusion, this analysis shows that budget movies have been equally as good as expensive movies over the last five years, if not better, given that they have won four of the five awards.

Another way to show the role of money in this category was to consider each award year separately – comparing the least expensive movie, the median, and the enormous budget. Every year except 2018, the winning film trailed the median budget and was nowhere close to the most expensive movie.

And when it comes to genre, four of the five winning movies were tagged drama or combined with the genres. Again, Black Panther, sci-fi and adventure, in 2018 was the only exception. It goes to show that the Best Picture award is full of drama.

Over the period, Netflix and Amazon Studios, the two notable streaming companies, distributed nine movies – the same as Universal Studios, which also showed up nine times. However, the streaming companies did not distribute any of the winning films.