Oscars 2013 Best Picture: Warner Brothers and Disney spend millions promoting Argo and Lincoln The two blockbusters are out in front as favourites for the top award Other studios are also spending big in a bid to catch the critics' eyes By Tom Leonard In New York It is being billed as the £7million 'arms race'. Two of Hollywood's biggest studios are going toe-to-toe - and wallet-to-wallet - to secure the Best Picture Oscar on Sunday night. In the costliest campaign in Oscar history, Warner Brothers and Disney have spent millions in recent weeks to promote their rival offerings, Argo and Lincoln. The two films, the first starring Ben Affleck and the second Daniel Day-Lewis are considered the favourites for the Oscars' top award. Toe-to-toe: Argo, starring Ben Affleck (left), and Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis (right), are up for the top award Other big studios in the running, such as Universal Studios with Les Miserables, Sony Pictures with Zero Dark Thirty and 20th Century Fox with Life of Pi, have only been marginally less extravagant, say Hollywood insiders. Oscars fever has even spread to Washington where politicians right up to Barack Obama have been co-opted, either consciously or unwittingly, to promote rival films. Gong: The Oscar remains the most coveted prize 'It's like an arms race this year,' said Jim Burke, a producer of last year's best picture nominee, The Descendants. An Academy Award can add tens of millions to a film's earnings as well as make winning studios more attractive to image-conscious actors and film-makers. The blizzard of spending covers not only full-page adverts in both trade and national newspapers but also TV and radio commercials. Studios are also shelling out on expensive 'wallscape' digital posters which are beamed on to the side of prominent buildings around Los Angeles and can cost as much as £130,000. On top of that, studios have been spending millions of dollars flying film-makers and actors around the world to publicise movies and win less prestigious awards that might impress the 5,800 Oscars selectors. Hollywood insiders have also been stunned by the industry's lavish spending on presents - some might call them bribes - to opinion formers. Hundreds of critics were sent DVD copies of Spielberg's Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis is an Oscar favourite in the title role, that were housed in a special inlaid and numbered box and accompanied by four different lavish books about the historical period. When the 250 judges of the influential Critics' Choice Movie Awards gave Lincoln a record 13 nominations, director Steven Spielberg sent each of them a personally-signed thank you note on headed stationery. It is estimated that Warner Brothers and Disney have each spent £6.6 million in recent weeks Universal, the studio behind Les Miserables, sent the same critics iPod Shuffles, each loaded with songs from the musical. Promotion: Universal, which is behind Les Miserables, starring Anne Hathaway (pictured) sent critics iPods The spending spree has been helped by the fact that voting for the top awards has been extended by two weeks. Some studios have employed Washington lobbyists to rope politicians into their campaigns, even when the films have nothing to do with politics at all. Barack Obama hosted a private screening of Lincoln at the White House last November and, in an unprecedented move, another screening was arranged in the US Senate by its Democrat leader, Harry Reid. Vice President Joe Biden, who is promoting a bill about mental care, introduced the director of Silver Linings Playbook - an Oscar-nominated comedy about mental illness - to the floor of the US Senate. Argo, a dramatised account of how the CIA rescued six US embassy hostages in 1979, features the then president, Jimmy Carter, talking about the mission. Let the laughs begin: On Thursday promotional images of Academy Awards host Seth MacFarlane were released with the host pretending to be an Oscar statue VIDEO Now watch the trailers...