$6,663,508.

Others ramp up their theater count as buzz builds around who is going to get the nomination in the first place. Atonement, for example, picked up 700 theaters in 2008 by the time nominations were announced. Infamously, Dreamgirls tried to do this but got snubbed by the academy and saw its per-theater gross plummet. Instead of expanding into noisy buzz, Dreamgirls found itself singing into the vacuum. And still others, like Babel, return to wide-release post-nomination—already having been in wide-release earlier in their life cycles.

All of these movies share a common trait: the desire to last as long as possible in the box office, to keep raking in money before the DVD sales portion of a movie’s life begins. (The nomination’s effects on DVD sales is an explanation for another time.) A best picture nomination is the equivalent of cinematic Viagra: If your box office stamina lasts longer than four weeks, please consult a physician.

The stamina is relative to the movies that didn’t make the best picture cut. By the time the Oscar nominations come around, all movies have been out for at least four weeks, since they had to have debuted in the previous calendar year. Many movies (e.g., Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, The Squid and the Whale) have been out far longer. Those are the ones that most need that extra jolt to stick around a bit longer and make more money. Since that jolt comes most often from best picture nominations, we were most interested in comparing best picture nominees with all the other movies that could have benefited from the top nomination but fell short.

And that’s how we got to that $6,663,508 figure. We culled data from the dozens of movies over the past four years that were in the thick of the Oscar race come January. We’ve separated the movies into two categories: “Best Pictures,” for those that got the nomination, and “Movies That Mattered,” an admittedly subjective classification based on whether movies were rumored to be in the running for best picture at some point in their lifespan or whether they received marquee Oscar nominations in other categories. To measure the effect of a best picture nomination, we looked at the weekend box-office data for the four weeks before and after the nominations were announced, focusing on three important metrics: total gross per weekend, number of theaters where the movie was playing, and average gross per theater. You can see the results in a monstrous spreadsheet here.

The $6,663,508 number represents the average extra money made by best picture nominees compared with the regular Movies That Mattered. Because of the way we calculated the figure, it applies only to the four or so weeks between the nomination and the awards ceremony. Obviously, there are other benefits after the Oscars—DVD sales, namely—but after the ceremony, too many other factors come into play for us to make an adequate calculation.

We arrived at the number by calculating the cumulative net gain of best picture nominees in the four weeks after the nomination announcement compared with the four weeks before the nominations. Those movies net, on average, $1,195,019 more in the post-nomination four weeks than in the pre-nomination four weeks. MTMs make, on average, $5,468,489 less in post-nomination weeks than beforehand, representing the natural decline in ticket sales as a movie lingers in theaters. Combine those figures, and you get $6,663,508.