This Is the Movie That Won the Most Oscars

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 15, 7:30AM EDT

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Hundreds of movies, actors, directors and filmmaking specialists have been nominated for Academy Awards since they were first given out in 1929. However, based on today’s system, only about one in five nominees actually wins. The odds, it would seem, favor movies with multiple nominations each year. However, from time to time, a popular nominee is snubbed. The most recent example is that Anthony Hopkins won for Best Actor for his role in “The Father” over Chadwick Boseman in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Boseman had died just a few months before the awards ceremony.

The most prominent Oscar each year is for Best Picture. Some of the greatest movies of all time, including “The Godfather” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” have won. To win a large number of awards for a single movie, it must win in more obscure categories as well.

To identify the movie that has won the most Oscars, 24/7 Tempo consulted the Official Academy Awards Database to determine every film that has won at least seven Academy Awards, how many nominations each of these received and what studio produced each film. Information on domestic ticket sales comes from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by Nash Information Services.

Three very different movies are tied for the most wins, 11 for each. They are 2003’s fantasy saga “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” the third film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy; James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster “Titanic”; and a throwback to 1959, the biblical epic “Ben-Hur.” If “Titanic” is number one on our list, it is only because it beat out the others in the number of nominations: 14, as opposed to 12 for “Ben-Hur” and 11 for “The Return of the King.”
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Historical dramas seem to stand a good chance of garnering a shelf full of Oscars. Many of the films tapped for multiple honors portray historical figures, like “Gandhi,” “Patton” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” as well as Mozart and Shakespeare. Four musicals scored big, too: “Cabaret,” “My Fair Lady,” “Gigi” and the original, pre-Spielberg version of “My Fair Lady.”

Despite winning 11 out of 14 nominations, 1997’s “Titanic” was produced by 20th Century Fox and Paramount and had ticket sales of $659 million.

Click here to see all the movies that won the most Oscars.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.