When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this month, Netflix outperformed Hollywood studios with its 24 nominations, nearly doubling its own record. Disney, which now owns 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight, came closest with 22 nominations. This dominance is a first for the streaming service, which began creating original films just six years ago, starting with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend, a sequel to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film. From the beginning, it seems, Netflix has had its eye on the prize.
The majority of Netflix’s 2020 nominations, including two for best picture, went to Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. This is a bit of leapfrogging for the company, which had its first best picture nom last year with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma. (Roma ultimately took home the award for Foreign Language Film, a category that’s since been renamed to International Feature Film.) While Netflix has had a strong showing the documentary category since it launched film-length content in 2014, before this year, its feature film awards attention had been slow, but steady.
A good point of comparison for Netflix’s exponential jump this year is A24, another auteur-oriented, less-than-a-decade-old film studio. A24 was the studio behind Barry Jenkins’ 2017 Best Picture winner Moonlight, along with other notable films of the past decade including Alex Gibney’s Ex Machina, Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird, and Lenny Abrahamson’s Room (which earned Brie Larson a Best Actress Oscar in 2016). A24 also released some of 2019’s most talked about movies, like the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, but was shut out of major awards this time around.
But Netflix, unlike A24, is more than a studio. It’s a brand with millions of subscribers worldwide and money to spend. It can afford to take creative risks that more traditional studios can’t and spend on publicity in a big way. (Last year, Netflix spent an estimated $60 million in its failed Best Picture bid for Roma.) With its recent purchase of The Paris Theater, a once-shuttered single-screen cinema in New York and plans to buy the Egyptian theater in Hollywood, Calif. Netflix seems to have a long term strategy in mind. With these spaces, the company would be able to bypass national movie theater chains, which have long opposed screening streaming-distributed films.
After some debate as to whether the length and scope of an eligible film’s theatrical run should be extended, screening requirements for Oscar nominations were notably unchanged this year Currently, in order to be nominated, a film must have a “minimum seven-day theatrical run in a Los Angeles County commercial theater, with at least three screenings per day for paid admission.” If Netflix buys the Egyptian Theater, it would likely operate it with American Cinematheque, a nonprofit that currently owns the space and runs first-run films along with talks and repertory programming.
It would be a good way for Netflix to help reassert itself as a brand for cinephiles, not just a place to “See What’s Next.” After all, Netflix started as a mail-order DVD service intended to serve those who couldn’t find what they were looking for at Blockbuster. On a less visible scale, Netflix has always been serving this mission. Along with high-profile filmmakers, the company has been investing in independent filmmakers and working with distributors to bring a wider audience to their projects. (Studio71 recently produced Saving Zoë, a film now available on Netflix starring sisters Vanessa and Laura Marano.) Whether or not Netflix takes home the top prize on Oscar night, it’s already won the attention it deserves.
