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Oscars favourite ‘The Revenant’ the talk of social media

'The Revenant' is the Oscar nominee getting the most mentions on social media. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, February 25, 2016.'The Revenant' is the Oscar nominee getting the most mentions on social media. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, February 25, 2016.Since the Oscar nominations were announced back in January, the Alejandro Iñárritu movie has been mentioned almost 11 million times on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

According to a study by RelishMix, "The Revenant" looks like the movie that's won over both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the web-surfing public.

As the hot favourite for the 2016 Oscars with 12 nominations, the western is also the nominated movie that's sparked the most interest from social network users.

Between January 14 – the day nominations were announced – and February 23, the movie's various trailers clocked up over 10 million views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The film's lead actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, gained 486,000 new Twitter followers and 312,000 new Facebook fans.

The Oscars sometimes shine the spotlight on independent films that might otherwise escape the public's attention. This year, indie flick "Room" has been thrust into the limelight, coming second in the RelishMix ranking, with 4.3 million social media mentions. Since the nominations, the movie, starring Brie Larson, has doubled its number of YouTube views from 4.1 to 8.2 million.

As for other Best Picture nominees, "The Big Short" has notched up 3.7 million mentions, ahead of "Bridge of Spies" (2.9 million), "The Martian" (2.8 million), "Spotlight" (1.8 million), "Brooklyn" (1.6 million) and "Mad Max: Fury Road" (1.6 million).

However, social media popularity is no sure-fire way of predicting which of these eight movies will take Best Picture at the 88th Oscars ceremony on Sunday, February 28.

Last year, "American Sniper", directed by Clint Eastwood, bagged the most mentions but lost out on the gong to Alejandro Iñárritu's "Birdman", which was the third-most-mentioned nominee on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, behind "Boyhood". – AFP/Relaxnews, February 25, 2016.

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