On the eve of the 2024 Oscar nominations, Netflix film chief Scott Stuber announced that he is leaving his position to start his own film company. Its release couldn’t have come at a better time.
When Stuber started working at Netflix in 2017, the streamer’s executives would have been thrilled to receive the 18 nominations its original films have earned this year. Prior to this point, the only approval the company had received had come from documentary proposals. Despite having prestigious films from directors like Bong Joon-ho and Noah Baumbach, the streamer wasn’t taken seriously in the awards arena.
In the years since, Netflix, strengthened by competition from Amazon and Apple, has helped make streaming movies (with its superior theatrical releases) a viable, even formidable, Oscar contender.
The issue of whether a streamer could even air an award was quickly resolved, with the Amazon-distributed Manchester by the Sea winning Best Actor (Casey Affleck) and the studio’s Moonlight coming out on top the same year Stuber joined the team. prize. The latter was a stunning victory even without the infamous La La Land mess, but it’s worth noting that both films enjoyed traditional theatrical releases. Netflix wanted to completely disrupt that model and showcase its best potential in the shortest, smallest theatrical window possible in order to qualify for awards.
Over the next few years, Netflix achieved its goal in every way except the Best Picture award. Movies like 2018’s Rome won major awards and received an impressive number of nominations. However, despite all this, reactions to the Netflix model continued. No less an authority than Steven Spielberg was adamant that the releases did not deserve awards controversy.
Even 2019’s The Irishman, a Martin Scorsese film that reunited Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and a then-rarely seen Joe Pesci, seemed to have an air of direct-to-video cheapness when viewed widely from the comfort of one’s home. Although it garnered 10 Oscar nominations, this film’s status as a cinematic success still seemed to have diminished; And long before losing in every category.
It is almost certain that the environment in which it is seen most has an effect. For many viewers, ease of access makes even the highly anticipated movie’s home release feel like less of an event. If this movie were a really big deal, we’d have to plan according to the stubborn logic of precedent and leave our homes to see it.
In the year after The Irishman’s 2020 premiere, movie fans could barely leave their homes to see anything. The early COVID quarantine period has led to the 2021 Oscar season being flooded with offerings from Netflix, Apple, and Amazon that have either never been seen before in movie theaters or have been rarely seen before. Movies like Amazon’s Sound of Metal have been awarded major awards (a Best Actor Oscar for Riz Ahmed) that would go elsewhere in a typical year.
Even as people flocked to theaters soon into 2021, streaming services collectively scooped their biggest awards moment yet the following year. In the Best Film category of 2022, Apple Coda, which was released on Apple TV + on the same date as the theatrical release, competed with Netflix’s The Power of The Dog and Don’t Look Up, and Coda achieved a shocking victory. It was the clearest measure yet of the awards’ rise in legitimacy, cementing the streaming model’s status as a rival to the theatrical model.