“La La Land” mesmerized Golden Globes voters, but most of the people who watched the awards ceremony at home don’t know why.
It won a record seven Golden Globes, including for Best Picture in the comedy or musical category and acting prizes for leads Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. The show opened with an homage to “La La Land” featuring host Jimmy Fallon and his old friends Tina Fey and Justin Timberlake.
But it’s unlikely that more than a third of the people watching from home have actually seen the film.
Here’s how we arrived at that estimate.
“La La Land” has made a modest $51.6 million domestically. At last year’s average ticket price of $8.42 (a number provided by the National Association of Theatre Owners), that adds up to about 6.1 million people who bought tickets to “La La Land” — with a few thousand insiders and media types seeing it for free.
Last year, 18.5 million people tuned in for the Golden Globes, which was down from 19.3 million the year before. Assuming the same viewership as last year (and that everyone who saw “La La Land” is watching the Globes), that would leave more than than two-thirds of today’s TV audience out of the loop.
Of course, award-magnet films like “La La Land” often benefit at the box office from buzz around their wins — so Sunday was probably a great night for “La La Land” in ways we can’t count yet.