How the Blind Side Made It All the Way to the Oscars

The whoops and giggles, heard at 5:42 a.m. on Tuesday as Anne Hathaway announced that "The Blind Side" was in the pool of 10 best picture nominees at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, were the sound of Hollywood surprising itself.

The film's makers had created a deeply earnest picture aimed less at tastemakers than at people in the middle: sports fans, families, churchgoers and do-gooders.

Unexpectedly, those middle-of-the-road fans had turned the movie into not merely a smash hit -- as of Wednesday, "The Blind Side" had taken in more than $238 million at the domestic box office and was still playing in about 1,750 theaters -- but a genuine Oscar contender. Both the film and its lead actress, Sandra Bullock, received nominations.

And even some of its backers were left puzzling over a question that has not often troubled the movie business lately: What went right?

"My mother would say we should quit while we're ahead," said Andrew Kosove, a producer of "The Blind Side" and a chief executive of Alcon Entertainment, which made the film and arranged for its distribution by Warner Brothers.

Mr. Kosove spoke by telephone on Wednesday from an airport in Memphis, where he had just joined Broderick Johnson, also a producer of the movie and an Alcon chief executive, in meeting with Frederick W. Smith, the FedEx founder who helped finance their company.

Mr. Kosove and Mr. Johnson were quick to acknowledge John Lee Hancock, a veteran filmmaker who wrote and directed "The Blind Side," which was based on a real story and a book by Michael Lewis.

Even more, they point to a career-capping turn by Ms. Bullock, who had never before been nominated for an Oscar. She plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a Southern white woman who took the young Michael Oher, a homeless black youth, under her wing and helped to make him a football star.

"I think Sandra Bullock's performance was ahead of the movie," Mr. Johnson said.

Still, Ms. Bullock seemed genuinely shocked at the response by both the viewers and her professional peers -- about 1,200 members of the academy's actors branch assign the acting nominations -- to a role she once thought she had botched.

In an interview this week, Ms. Bullock referred to audience support for "The Blind Side" as "a godsend."

Her first week of shooting, she recalled, was "the worst I ever had."

By week two, Ms. Bullock added: "I regretted having taken the film. Like, I shouldn't have done this." She felt that her performance didn't click.

Yet "The Blind Side" was ultimately buoyed by its fans -- something that was possible, according to Mr. Kosove and Mr. Johnson, because the filmmakers had taken extraordinary steps to create a story that would appeal to disparate constituencies that were only in some ways connected to one another.

"This is almost a throwback to the regional marketing approach of the '50s, '60s and '70s, when you didn't have national advertising beyond the three television networks," said Dennis Rice, a Hollywood marketing consultant.