Which Movie Stocks Have the Most to Gain from the Oscars?

Tonight are the Academy Awards, but what about the companies behind these pictures?

Many times, the movies nominated for Academy Awards are not major hits, but this year some are very popular and frequently talked about. This year five of the nominees for Best Picture, “Argo,””Lincoln,” “Django,” “Les Miserables,” and “Life of Pi” have all managed to earn more than $100 million at the box office. Two more of the nominees, “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Zero Dark Thirty” are close to passing that mark as well. Last year, only one of the nominees for Best Picture, “The Help” managed to gross that much at the box office.

Furthermore, many of top studios are represented at the Oscars this year. Warner Brothers (NYSE:TWX) was behind “Argo,” Sony (NYSE:SNE) has “Zero Dark Thirty.” Fox (NASDAQ:NWSA) released “Life of Pi” while Universal Studios (NASDAQ:CMCSA) released “Lincoln.” Weinstein Co. (STRZA) released both “Django Unchained” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Winning an Academy Award can add value to a film, which is why movie studios put a lot of effort into releasing their films in time for the awards. Winning an award for Best Picture can add tens of millions of dollars to the film’s gross revenue. The film blog BoxOfficeQuant did an analysis of films that had won the Best Picture between 1990 and 2009 discovered that films that win the award get about an extra $14 million in revenue compared to films that are merely nominated for the award…