Having been strongly recommended at the Academy Awards, streaming services saw a reduced number of Oscar nominations this year.
Key Details
- Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday, with 10 films picking up Best Picture nominations—All Quiet On the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees Of Inisherin, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Fabelmans, Tar, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle Of Sadness, and Women Talking.
- The nominations marked a notable decline for Netflix, which for the first time in three years wasn’t the most nominated studio in Hollywood.
- Despite heavy promotional campaigns for films like Glass Onion, Pinocchio, Bardo, and White Noise, the company saw its nominations dwindle.
- Netflix’s war drama All Quiet On the Western Front did pick up nine nominations, although it was the only streaming film nominated for Best Picture.
- Streaming services Netflix, Apple, and Amazon collectively received 37 nominations in 2022—including a Best Picture win for AppleTV+’s Coda—which decreased to 19 this year, Deadline notes.
Why It’s Important
Netflix and streaming services have faced an uphill battle for legitimacy since they began producing original content in 2012. The Academy Awards has very tight rules for what types of films can and cannot be nominated—namely that a film needs a two-week theatrical release window in Los Angeles at minimum to qualify. Voters in the academy have also been generally reluctant to vote for streaming films, fearing the damage it would do to theatrical distribution.
That stigma has broken in recent years, with Netflix’s revisionist western The Power Of the Dog netting 12 Oscar nominations last year. Past Netflix nominations include The Irishman, Marriage Story, Roma, Hillbilly Elegy, and Tik Tik Boom.
This past year saw the resurgence of theatrical distribution in a significant way. Top Gun: Maverick grossed $1.49 billion, and Avatar: The Way Of Water became the sixth film in history to gross $2 billion at the box office. Many theatrical films that made the Best Picture list have had an extensive year-long buzz surrounding them, such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, Elvis, and The Fabelmans.
Netflix and streaming benefited during the pandemic and lockdowns when theatrical distribution for new films was significantly reduced for nearly an entire year, and box office grosses remained low through early 2022. Streaming services may see their market share return to pre-pandemic levels as audiences have more options.
The Academy Awards will be hosted on ABC on March 12, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.