Last year, Weinstein Co's "The Artist," a film about a silent-movie star, took home the golden statue for best picture, generating $44.6 million in North American box office ticket sales in all. Of that total, 71 percent came in after its nomination and victory.

The Weinstein Co beefed up its TV ads and increased the number of theaters showing the movie three days after its Oscar nomination, to 897 from 662, said movie online site Box Office Mojo. That number rose to 1,756 a week after it won the award.

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"Zero Dark Thirty," a gritty film distributed by Sony about the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALs, is being shown in only 60 theaters, but will be expanded to about 2,400 theaters on Friday, said Dergarabedian. The film collected five nods, including best picture and best screenplay, but suffered one of the biggest snubs of the day -- no best director nomination for Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow.

Adam Fogelson, chairman of Universal, a unit of Comcast and distributor of best film nominee "Les Miserables," said the movie's marketing from the start was aimed to take advantage of awards season and it has helped.

"We are already on a great trajectory domestically, and we have indications that people are talking about this film internationally as well," he told Reuters.

Oscars can also breathe new life into DVD sales.

When Lions Gate Entertainment took home the gold for "Crash" in 2006, it had already been released in both the theatrical and DVD markets. Its DVD sales spiked after the Academy Awards, with Lions Gate selling 17,500 copies of "Crash" in one day after the Oscars, more than half the previous week's entire total of 33,000.