(Bloomberg) — The race for this year’s best-picture Oscar is shaping up to be a battle between Netflix Inc. and Apple Inc. Either way it’s likely to mark the first time the industry’s top honor has gone to a film distributed primarily online and not in theaters.
The contest between Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog” and Apple TV+’s “CODA” says much about the film business in 2022. Theaters are still recovering from the pandemic, which has kept families and older filmgoers in particular away from cinemas. Meanwhile, Hollywood studios are making their movies available for home viewing exclusively or much sooner than they did in the past to compete with tech companies offering video streaming services and financing their own film and TV slates.
The Academy Awards, which will be broadcast on Walt Disney Co.’s ABC starting at 8 p.m. New York time Sunday, comes with its usual amount of pre-show drama. The awards were pushed back a month after last year’s ceremony was delayed to due to Covid-19.
Viewership for the ceremony has plunged in recent years, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which hands out the awards, is trying to reduce the historically long run time by handing out eight prizes before the broadcast. That’s sparked an uproar, particularly for contenders in categories that didn’t make the cut, like film editing and production design.
The ceremony returns this year to its regular home at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, with seating for 3,300, after being held last year before a much smaller audience at downtown’s Union Station due to pandemic precautions.
Three female comedians — Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes — will preside over Sunday’s ceremony, after the academy previously experimented with no hosts. The producer, Will Packer, is trying to reach a broader audience by adding more music and sports stars as presenters, including skateboarder Tony Hawk and snowboarder Shaun White.
Rachel Zegler, who played Maria in the best picture-nominated adaptation of “West Side Story,” was named as a presenter last week after disclosing she hadn’t been invited to the ceremony. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the hit song from the Disney film “Encanto,” will be performed live even though it isn’t nominated for an award.
Read more: Oscars’ quest for diversity
The academy has grappled for years with criticism that it shortchanges minorities, and has worked to diversify its nearly 9,500 voting members. Actor Will Smith, who has never won an Oscar, is a contender this year for his lead performance as the father of the tennis-playing Williams sisters in “King Richard.” This year’s lineup include four Black people nominated for acting awards, including Smith, who is up for the third time.
Troy Kotsur, who played the father in “CODA,” is considered a top pick for best-supporting actor. He is one of only two deaf artists ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar. His “CODA” costar, Marlee Matlin, was the first, winning in 1987 for her lead role in “Children of a Lesser God.”
Netflix Quest
Netflix has been studiously trying to win a best picture Oscar for at least four years. The campaign began in earnest with 2018’s “Roma,” which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won three, including best director for Alfonso Cuarón.
The streaming industry pioneer made films with some of the most-respected directors in the business, including Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Noah Baumbach. It has spent tens of millions of dollars on Oscar campaigns and fought off criticism from industry luminaries like Steven Spielberg, who said movies made for TV shouldn’t be eligible for Academy Awards. Spielberg is nominated this year for “West Side Story,” which appeared initially only in theaters. He also now has a deal to make movies for Netflix.
“The Power of the Dog,” a drama about the tense relationships in a ranching family in 1920s Montana, has been the favorite to win best picture for months on Oscar-prediction sites like GoldDerby.com. Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up,” a satire about a comet hurtling toward Earth, is also nominated but isn’t considered a likely winner.
“CODA,” about a high-schooler who can hear trying to help the deaf members of her family, has lately been building buzz, including winning the top honor from the influential Producers Guild of America on March 19.
“Sometime it’s the film that wins your heart that ultimately wins the day,” said Erik Davis, managing editor of the ticket site Fandango. “That’s one thing about ‘CODA,’ it’s a super-heartwarming film that’s arrived at a time when a lot of people really needed it.”
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