You seem to be nitpicking just to make a point. Tell me another actor who made a prestige movie with top director for 100 million plus budget on a non IP and release it in December and or any other time of year and get Oscar nomination in last 10 years ?
Matt Damon in
The Martian.
There is a difference between big budget movies like lord of the rings/gravity/life of pi and something like wolf of Wall Street/revenant because the former movies are gambles with no major star attached to them(Sandra Bullock is bankable in comedic genre and not sci-fi).. where as the latter has certain star power proof they would make money from previous hits of the star.
Bullock doesn't lose star power by doing a different genre - she had already won an Oscar by that point for a dramatic role anyway so it's not like it mattered (and George Clooney shared top billing anyway). Besides, two of them are based off best-selling books anyway - the title is the seller (and in the latter case, having an Oscar-winning director doesn't hurt either).
It’s planned already ... an epic made by director of the frighteners or hulk is much more risky than an Oscar movie made by Scorsese or Tarantino or Innaritu as their track record in that aspect is incredibly high.The risk of failure is drastically reduced when you got directors like that at helm. Their track record is impeccable.
Ang Lee had literally won an Oscar for directing
Brokeback Mountain by that point - calling him "the director of
Hulk" is like referring to Spielberg as "the director of
Hook". Why are you even arguing with me about risk-taking and its relative merits? I wasn't the one to bring it up and I'm not about to act like taking risks automatically makes an actor/director/whatever better than one that doesn't. Bale gaining weight doesn't automatically improve an obnoxious Scorsese-wannabe dramedy like
American Hustle (which was also made by an acclaimed director who had made multiple Oscar-winning films by that point so where's the risk now) nor does "make a comedy with the director of
Anchorman" seem especially risky either. The same goes for working with Ridley Scott - dude's made as many bad movies as good ones for 40 years but he's still going - and Christopher "
Memento" Nolan. (I'll grant you
American Psycho, though.) I'm not even DiCaprio's biggest fan or anything but I'm not about to begrudge him using star power to help get these projects off the ground either nor him turning in consistently solid performances. I will concede that the fanbase gets obnoxious at times - if nothing else, him finally winning an Oscar meant that none of us have to put up with any more "where is his Oscar" memes ever again.