The 94th Academy Awards are quickly approaching and this Sunday viewers will learn what films, actors and other cinema artists the Academy favored most from 2021.
This year’s lineup of Best Picture nominees spans a variety of times and places, and as such, feature all different kinds of homes. From spacious ranches to tiny Manhattan apartments, the 2022 nominees for Best Picture showcase it all.
Inman rounded up the homes most prominently featured in this year’s nominees, and broke them down by time, place and estimated home price, as well as what they would cost today, for all the real estate movie buffs out there to follow along with during this year’s ceremony. Which is your favorite?
Editor’s note: Unless otherwise stated, Inman used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator for this story to calculate what prices of homes would be today, adjusted for inflation, comparing prices from February of the given year of the home’s setting to February 2022 (the latest month/year that the calculator will allow).
The Power of the Dog
The Burbank Ranch in The Power of the Dog | Credit: Netflix
Year: 1925
Place: Rural Montana
Estimated price: $11 per acre, according to 1925 classified listings in Montana newspapers
Price today in USD: $181 per acre
The grand Craftsman home located on the Burbank family ranch, which would have sold for about $11 per acre in its day, reflects the wealth and prosperity the family has built up over generations through business endeavors in both the eastern and western United States. (The novel the film was based on notes that the family comes from the East Coast and that the ranch home drew on this aesthetic.)
But the home’s dark and hollow-like interior also reflects the emotional turmoil that plagues its inhabitants, production designer Grant Major told Indie Wire, like rancher Phil Burbank’s inner secretive torment hidden behind his authoritarian façade and single-mother Rose Gordon’s isolation in a world dominated by men.
Nightmare Alley
Rooney Mara and Bradley Cooper in the film Nightmare Alley. Photo by Kerry Hayes. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Year: 1940s
Place: Upper East Side, Manhattan
Estimated price: Weekly rent of about $38 per room, based on data provided by the Real Estate Board of New York
Price today in USD: Weekly rent of about $606 per room
After finding success as an independent act following a life on the road with the carnival, Molly and Stan Carlisle gradually move up the ranks of New York society with the help of psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter and settle into a lavish midcentury modern apartment.
While enjoying the high life by swindling Manhattan’s elite, Molly and Stan would have paid a weekly rent of about $38 on the swanky Upper East Side.
West Side Story (2021)
Ariana DeBose as Anita and David Alvarez as Bernardo in 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story. Photo by Niko Tavernise. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Year: 1957
Place: San Juan Hill (now Lincoln Square), Manhattan
Estimated price: Weekly rent of $6-8 per room, according to data provided by the Real Estate Board of New York
Price today in USD: Weekly rent of $64-85 per room
One of the most iconic scenes between the star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria in West Side Story is when the duo take to the fire escape outside Maria’s humble apartment, which would have cost about $6 in weekly rent per room, to declare their love in the song “Tonight.”
The rugged brick-façade building would have been a hub of community activity when San Juan Hill was home to a significant portion of Manhattan’s African American and Puerto Rican residents before being demolished in the late 1950s in order to make space for the development of Lincoln Center.
Belfast
Writer/director Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, a Focus Features release | Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Year: Late 1960s
Place: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Estimated price: 3,941 British pounds, according to a paper by M.C. Fleming and J.G. Nellis in The Economic and Social Review in 1981
Price today in USD: $91,134, based on the Bank of England’s inflation calculator
Buddy’s childhood home in Belfast is a modest two-bedroom row house on a block with a tight-knit community — until The Troubles arrive and divide the neighborhood between Catholic and Protestant.
While Buddy’s mother frets over paying the mortgage on the family’s cozy home (which would have cost nearly 4,000 British pounds) and keeping her boys out of trouble, Buddy and his brother are largely carefree and content to share a bedroom.
Licorice Pizza
Alana Kane’s living room in Licorice Pizza | Credit: MGM Studios
Year: 1973
Place: San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles
Estimated price: $26,400, according to U.S. Census Bureau data
Price today in USD: $174,594
As Gary Valentine and Alana Kane trundle around the San Fernando Valley, following hopes and dreams and finding friendship and more, they encounter typical California homes of the 1970s (which had a median price of $26,400), including ranches, bungalows, homes of the stars, and more.
These houses mark signs of the times — stained glass, vibrant ’70s hues, chain-hung lights, plastic-covered furniture and wood paneling — as Gary and Alana struggle to find their path between acting gigs and waterbed startups in this coming-of-age dramedy.
Drive My Car
Yūsuke Kafuku with Misaki Watari and his Saab Turbo 900 in Drive My Car | Credit: Courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films
Year: 1987
Place: Saab Turbo 900, Hiroshima, Japan
Original MSRP: $26,580, according to J.D. Power
Average price today in USD: $5,550, according to J.D. Power
Following the death of his wife Oto, Yusuke Kafuku’s Saab Turbo 900, which would have cost about $26,600 upon release, becomes “home” to him more than anything else when he takes a job directing a play in Hiroshima.
Each day, Yusuke is chauffeured in his Saab to and from work by Misaki Witari, a professional driver whom he opens up to about his grief, and she, about her own past regrets, as they relish the vehicle as a safe space to open up.
King Richard
The Williams family inside their Compton home in King Richard | Credit: Warner Bros.
Year: 1995
Place: Compton, California
Estimated price: $160,000, according to data from the California Association of Realtors
Price today in USD: $300,825
This classic Compton home of the future women’s tennis power houses, Venus and Serena Williams, is replete with ’90s-era fixings like floral-patterned sofas, neutral carpeting, a few pine-paneled walls and gingham curtains. It would have cost about $160,000 in its day.
The humble home packed with two hard-working parents and their five girls (including Venus and Serena’s step sisters) is nothing too fancy, but is a place where dreams were made and stars were born when Richard Williams coached his daughters before their big break in tennis.
Don’t Look Up
A meeting in the Oval Office in Don’t Look Up | Credit: Netflix
Year: 2020
Place: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Estimated price: $417 million, according to Zestimates from 2020
Today’s Zestimate: $454.9 million
When Dr. Randall Mindy and his astronomy Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky stumble across a “planet-killing” comet hurtling towards Earth, the two scramble to warn President Janie Orlean in a meeting at the White House, which was valued at about $417 million in 2020, according to Zillow.
Unfortunately, the President is skeptical of the severity of Mindy and Dibiasky’s warnings, and the comet becomes sharply politicized among the public in this dark comedy.
CODA
Ruby and Frank Rossi outside their Gloucester home in CODA | Credit: Apple TV+
Year: 2021
Place: Gloucester, Massachusetts
Estimated price: $600,000, according to data from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors
Price today in USD: $647,226
Ruby Rossi grows up as the hearing child of deaf adults (CODA) in her humble home in Gloucester, which might rake in as much as $600,000 on the coveted market in 2020, while dreaming of becoming a singer.
Struggling to find her place caught between two worlds of hearing and non-hearing, Ruby finds her voice while practicing in her family’s rustic Cap Cod-style home.
Dune (2021)
Interior of the Palace at Arrakeen in Dune | Credit: Chiabells James. Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Year: 10191
Place: Palace at Arrakeen, desert planet of Arrakis
Estimated price: 212.57 million Solaris, based on data from a r/AskScienceFiction Reddit thread
Price today in USD: $120 million
The formidable Palace at Arrakeen — known as “the largest structure ever built by man,” according to Dune author Frank Herbert — is made of some of the sleekest, most durable materials available on the desolate planet in order to withstand the harsh wind and dust storms of the desert, production designer Patrice Vermette recently told Architectural Digest.
Light wells, as opposed to windows, are another distinctive feature of homes in the region, which block out the sun’s oppressive heat while providing some natural light indoors. Practical yet enormous, refined and an earthy elegant, this palace that costs an estimated 212.57 Solaris (the planet’s currency) is truly fit for Arrakis’ royals.
