This is not exactly the result that disappointed Avatar fans were expecting.

THIS is not exactly the result that disappointed Avatar fans were expecting.

Oscar voters passed over the top-grossing film of all time, and instead gave Best Picture to The Hurt Locker, which sold the fewest tickets of any Best Picture winner in academy history.

The academy also made history by choosing Kathryn Bigelow of The Hurt Locker as the first woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director - over her ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron.

Avatar and Cameron seemed unbeatable in January after winning at the Golden Globes and becoming a genuine international cultural phenomenon.

Director Kathryn Bigelow attends the 82 Annual Academy Awards Governor's Ball

But experts say the film's Oscar campaign failed to capitalize on its momentum and allowed the flick to get swamped in the inevitable backlash.

Avatar was widely mocked by the chattering classes for being derivative. A lightly revised script for the Disney cartoon Pocahontas, underlining the similarities between the two films, circulated through the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, the film's campaigners pushed unsuccessfully to get a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Zoe Saldana, who appears in the film only in animated form.

"The campaign was overly defensive, focusing too much on convincing the voters that the motion-capture performances were real acting," said a veteran Oscar consultant.

"Instead, they should have emphasized on what a game-changer Avatar is for the way movies will be made."

It probably did not help that many Oscar voters still remember Cameron's boastful "king of the world" speech from the night when his Titanic won 11 Oscars in 1998.

So Oscar voters continued the recent trend of embracing small, art-house flicks such as The Hurt Locker.

Ratings up

Preliminary data from the Walt Disney Co.shows the Oscar telecast enjoyed a big ratings jump from recent years, though the company conceded that current comparisons may not be proven accurate.

Disney said the Sunday telecast on its ABC network - in which the small, independent film The Hurt Locker went toe-to-toe against box-office goliath Avatar and won six Oscars, including best picture and best director - scored a 26.5 household rating and 40 share in 56 key markets.

The household rating, which measures the percentage of all homes watching the Oscars, appears to be up sharply from the 20.6 reported last year, when Slumdog Millionaire won best picture. And the 40 share, or the percentage of all TVs turned on that are tuned to the broadcast, compares with 31 last year.

Disney officials pointed out that ratings monitor Nielsen Co. has changed its methodology and so year-to-year comparisons are unavailable in the metered markets. Further, last year's numbers are final, while the current figures only show highly populous markets, where ratings tend to be higher for Oscar telecasts.

The five highest-rated markets are Chicago; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Boston; Kansas City; and San Francisco.

The network said more comprehensive figures were due out later Monday.

Still, the numbers could prove to be a boon for both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sponsor of the Oscars, as well as Disney, if the figures hold up. The academy had expanded its list of best-picture nominees to 10 from five in an effort to generate greater interest.

The telecast was helped by the fact that Avatar, which is now the all-time box-office champ with more than $2.5 billion in worldwide receipts, was one of the best-picture finalists and had garnered nine nominations in all.