A New Report On “Anora’s” Huge Oscars Campaign Budget Has Ruffled Some Feathers Online, So Here’s An Explainer On How It All Works

By now, you’re probably aware that Anora dominated at the 2025 Oscars, bagging the award for Best Picture, while Sean Baker won Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Mikey Madison took the accolade for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Mikey plays the titular stripper in the film, who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch.

One of the biggest talking points around Anora — which is an independent film produced by Neon — was that it was made on just a $6 million budget. It has since grossed over $40 million worldwide.

And now, a new report from Variety has given fresh insight into the film’s marketing budget for its Oscar campaign.

Neon CEO Tom Quinn told the outlet that $18 million was spent on Anora’s marketing, distribution and awards campaign — which, of course, is three times more than how much it cost to make.

Anora’s campaigning strategies included organizing a pop-up merch store selling T-shirts and thongs and having sex workers attend the first screening instead of Oscar voters. Tom told Variety of the unique campaign: “We follow the beat of our own drum. The idea of pandering to the campaign as opposed to being who you are as a film is a big, stark difference. We never play to the campaign. We always play to the film, filmmaker and audience — in that order.”

However, several internet users have since speculated that Anora’s large campaigning budget meant that its Oscars were “bought.” “So basically an Oscar can be bought?” read one Instagram comment with over 11,000 likes. “So….bribery?” said another.

“But it’s an independent movie. What a joke,” someone else wrote. “no artistic decision here… only money,” another comment read.

But it must be pointed out that having a large marketing and campaign budget is totally normal within Hollywood — even among independent films.

For context, Forbes reported last year that studios tend to invest between $3 million and $15 million on award show campaigns for films.

Neon, which was only founded in 2017, previously spent a whopping $20 million on the Oscars campaign for its 2019 film Paradise, which ultimately won Best Picture, too.

One person on Instagram explained, “Every studio allocates money to Oscar campaigns which includes flying the cast to awards and distributing screeners to voters/critics.” Meanwhile, another user described the large campaigning budgets as “a bit of a norm in the industry.”

“All studios do this. Not just Neon Studios. Maybe they don’t spend as many millions but this is the process for most of the awards and as far as I understand, it has been like it for years,” a third user wrote.

Indeed, that is the case. In fact, the Variety report notes that one of the other films nominated at the Oscars (which they do not name) was given $60 million to spend in its awards season campaign. Long story short, spending millions of dollars on an Oscar-nominated film’s marketing and campaigning is standard in Hollywood, and Anora shouldn’t be viewed differently for doing so. LMK what you think in the comments.