American television queen Oprah Winfrey's enthusiastic endorsement and a marketing blitz by Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox may not be enough to turn Baz Luhrmann's Australia into a box-office hit in the US.

A survey by research company Nielsen NRG found that the $US130 million ($200 million) movie, which opens in US cinemas on November 26 (the same day as its Australian release), had an unprompted awareness score among Americans of just 5 per cent.