The Oscars economy

On Sunday, March 7, hundreds of limousines will glide to a stop outside the Kodak Theatre and spill Hollywood's most glamorous stars-Sandra! Meryl! George! Penelope!-onto the red carpet. Oscar has come a long way in 82 years. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its first gala in 1929, just 270 people showed up to watch swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks hand out 15 golden statues (though audiences still complained it dragged on forever). Today, Oscar is an industry unto himself.

$130 million*

Economic boost Los Angeles gets from the Oscars each year

When a writers' strike threatened to shut down the Oscars in 2008, the gawkerazzi were aghast. So were limo drivers, security guards, and the army of designers and stylists it takes to get the stars red-carpet-ready-the Big Night is worth $26 million to the city's service industry. Then there are the enormous hotel and restaurant bills racked up by agents, designers and media in the weeks before, along with the roughly $54 million the studios and agencies spend on "for your consideration" ads. "A lot of people think these events are frivolous," says Los Angeles-based economic guru Jack Kyser. "But they actually act as an economic engine, creating jobs through

wide swaths of the economy."

*All currency in U.S. dollars

83:1

Ratio of an oscar nominee's salary to an average Canadian actor's

Since being nominated for Juno in 2008, Haligonian Ellen Page now gets an estimated $1 million a movie. The average Canadian actor makes about $12,000 a year. And Page isn't even close to the big-time-Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon commands $15 million and up. For an unknown like Page, though, an Oscar nod means bigger paycheques and better scripts. She has three films on the go, including Christopher Nolan's latest sci-fi thriller, Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

100+

Number of celebrities who will visit events organizer GBK Productions' gift lounge

Lavish swag is an Oscar tradition. The stars who attend GBK's lounge (Leo DiCaprio, Helen Mirren and Eva Longoria are past attendees) will pick up $30,000 worth of gear each. Winning a coveted spot in the GBK lineup can catapult a company onto the A-list. For an average cost of $7,500, vendors get a minute or two of pitch-time with each celebrity. One company calculated it got $2.1 million in free publicity thanks to GBK. That's good news for Canadian companies Eminence Cosmetics and Far North Saunas, who were deemed Oscar-worthy by GBK's CEO Gavin Keilly for this year's bash.

4.5 million

Number of viewers who tuned in to CTV's 2009 Oscar broadcast

The network pays dearly for exclusive rights to the Oscars and a spot on the red carpet for Plasticine eTalk-host Ben Mulroney. But it pays off: Almost one-third of Canadians watch at least part of the torturously long show, and Oscar Sunday beats out even the Super Bowl as the biggest event on CTV's schedule.

$375 million

Worldwide box office take for 2008 Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog was shot in India for $14 million (the cost of about eight minutes of Avatar) and was almost sent straight to DVD by Warner Bros. What a difference eight Oscars can make. In the week after the awards, the film topped the worldwide box office and got a 43% spike in revenue, the biggest Oscar bump since Titanic in '97. Since its DVD release a year ago, it has sold more than two million copies, worth an additional $32 million. Slumming it also paid off for star Freida Pinto. The one-time Mumbai model is Woody Allen's latest muse-she got paid $3 million to act in his film Whatever Works-and is the new face of L'Oréal.