While by the end of awards season it had become all too predictable that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” would take home the Oscar for Best Picture, its win points to a surprising trend among 2023 Oscar winners. A24 and Netflix, two studios barely a decade old, completely dominated the Oscars and won 15 of the 24 categories. Awards season seems to have opened up a new guard.
This year’s feats are particularly surprising as the narrative surrounding the 2022 film year celebrates the films that brought people back to theaters after the COVID-19 pandemic eased. While this has mostly been driven by major studio nominees like “Avatar: The Way of Water” (Disney) and “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount), A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” can be considered a happy medium. grossed more than $100 million at the box office, but still had a few regularly nominated production companies like Searchlight Pictures (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) and Universal Pictures (“The Fabelmans”) independent, artistic pieces that both happened to go home . empty handed this year.
It’s probably no coincidence that the remaining major studios will have a tough time at this year’s Oscars, after 2022 saw such a flurry of mergers and acquisitions that saw many of the film industry fail. A24 and Netflix are adapting better to the increasingly digital world. While the former is now likely to attract those working above the line, A24 became the first studio to win all four acting categories, in addition to winning Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, now we can say , that Netflix has earned the respect of the craft community.
Although the streaming service didn’t break its previous Oscar record (it won seven Oscars in 2021), “All Quiet on the Western Front” still beat Netflix’s “Roma” for the most wins (four to three Oscars). game. Even after six years of multiple losses in the category, after producing films with masters like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Jane Campion, it seems inevitable that Netflix will win Best Picture. In order to get so close to a film this year, the company did not originally want to show that the company could really be an Oscar superpower.
However, the Academy continues to prioritize films that provide a theatrical experience, and A24 will soon become the only studio able to attract large numbers of theatergoers to “prestige” projects. Even without a Best Picture nomination, “The Whale” still performed strongly at the box office after its December release. While the big media conglomerates that own perennial Oscar-nominated distribution companies like Searchlight Pictures, Focus Features, and Sony Pictures Classics figure out how to re-reach the artistic audience by better leveraging digital marketing, as their newer competitors are doing , A24 and Netflix are at the top of the Oscar rankings again next year.
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