In Laman's Terms: How Long Can Netflix Keep Up Its Oscars Pursuit?

Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos after being told Netflix will totally finally win a major Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards

Back in November 2015, Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that his greatest dream in the entertainment industry was to have an Oscar winner "thank Netflix" on stage. This comment came a month after Netflix released its first original narrative film, Beasts of No Nation. Two years later, Vanity Fair reported that Sarandos was keen on using lots and lots of Netflix money to pursue Oscars. This streamer was looking for validation in the film industry through Oscar wins, with their moves inspiring headlines like the June 2017 IndieWire piece "Netflix's Next Big Move? Hacking the Oscars" and a February 2019 New York Times piece entitled "In Bid to Conquer Oscars, Netflix Mobilizes Savvy Campaigner and Huge Budget". 

For a moment, it looked like Netflix might become the new powerhouse in the award season landscape. Studios eschewing mid-budget and adult-skewing features in the mid-2010s gave Netflix an easy in to attracting filmmakers boiling down to "we'll make the movies Warner Bros./Paramount/Disney etc. won't make anymore." This is how Netflix ended up with a 2019 award season slate anchored by new Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach, Mati Diop, and Fernando Meirelles movies. The COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters and forcing everyone to their choices for most of 2020 and 2021 suggested that Netflix might've become the master of the Oscars for the foreseeable future by default.

Cut to the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024 and Netlfix only took home one Oscar win (for Best Live-Action Short for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) from its 17 nominations. This mirrors the situation at the 94th Academy Awards two years ago when Netflix also won a solitary Oscar (for Best Director for Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog), though that year the streamer had 27 nominations in the mix. This lack of major Oscar wins is something that begs the question...how long can Netflix keep up its costly Oscar pursuits?

Netflix scored its first Oscar nomination back at the 86th Academy Awards (recognizing the best of 2014 cinema) for The Square, a documentary hailing from Egypt told largely in Egyptian Arabic. In hindsight, this nomination is intriguing partially because this ceremony occurred the same year Netflix started releasing original narrative motion pictures. However, starting Netflix's Oscar career with a foreign-language documentary also reflected the kinds of movies and pop culture Netflix has helped to make more mainstream in the last decade. The rise in popularity of foreign-language television shows and documentaries in recent years has been widely attributed to Netflix and other streamers making those projects more accessible to the general public. It's only fitting that the presence of Netflix at the Oscars would begin with a production that fits into both of those molds.

While Netflix quickly became an Oscar fixture in the Best Documentary feature camp (it even scored two nods in that category at the 88th Academy Awards in 2017), getting into the biggest categories at the ceremony was a lot trickier. Only on Netflix's fourth go-round in the award season circuit (for the 2018-2019 season) did the streamer break into the Best Director and Best Picture categories (with Roma). Netflix hasn't lost its grip on the most high-profile Oscar categories in terms of nominations since it broke through. The streamer is now going on six consecutive years of Best Picture nominations and had a four-year Best Director nomination streak that included two wins in the category (though the streamer has been shut out of the category during the last two ceremonies). In the acting categories, Netflix has proven quite skilled at garnering nominations, with 25% of the acting nominees at the 96th Academy Awards belonging to Netflix movie performances. 

Looking over the history of Netflix's Oscar nominations, though, it's shocking how few awards the streamer has managed to actually win over the years. Netflix's spending on award season campaigning is infamous at this point, yet it hasn't yielded many big victories. There are no Best Picture winners in the Netflix library. Only one acting Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern in Marriage Story) has ever been won by the streamer. Netflix has failed to secure any victories in either of the two Screenplay categories. Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, all these Oscars have eluded Netflix. Meanwhile, companies with way less money to spend (like A24) have been churning out modern Oscar darlings like Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Zone of Interest.

Netflix hasn't been a total bust at the Oscars (it scored seven wins at the Oscars last year across several different categories), but it's clear Netflix hasn't become a titan of the award show. The streamer's struggles to break into the Oscars are a microcosm of how Netflix's original film division just isn't nearly as successful or game-changing as its TV operation. When Netflix started dropping TV shows all at once in a binge-model format, the entire game changed. Meanwhile, Netflix's release strategy of debuting movies on its platform (after maybe two weeks of theatrical play in 30-ish theaters) with no promotion hasn't really become a widely imitated approach. On the contrary, Amazon MGM Studios and Apple TV+ are now embracing theatrical releases as a way to get on people's radar.

Netflix's eschewing of theaters may make Sarandos and other Silicon Valley types feel like "disruptors", but it's clearly hurting their movie operation on many fronts. Netflix can never be home to a big visually lavish spectacle like Dune: Part Two, nor could it ever house slow-burn arthouse hits like Parasite and Poor Things. Plopping movies of all stripes and sizes into an algorithm slush makes it impossible to find those titles or ensure they have a pop culture lifespan longer than an afternoon. This problem undoubtedly is hurting Netflix's chances at the Oscars*. The streamer has the money to get its movies on the radar of Oscar voters, as seen by the 17 nominations it secured this year. However, the company's films don't leave as much of an impact as titles like Oppenheimer or Everything Everywhere All at Once that flourish on the big screen. It's easy to see who will win in the duel between a movie you can watch on an app and a movie you can experience on an IMAX 70mm screen. Plus, Netflix's dedication to releasing as much "content" (God, I hate that word) as possible means that it's hard for individual titles to stand out. May December was one of 2023's best movies. It also could've secured more than one Oscar nod if Netflix's awards team didn't have to divvy up its attention across so many movies.

Anyone with eyes can see that Netflix's movie operation is clearly not working to a comical degree. Sarandos can brag about the supposedly "massive" viewership audience of these original titles all he wants. It doesn't mean anyone in the real world is talking or cares about Rebel Moon. Even the Nielsen viewership chart for the most-watched streaming movies of 2023 reflects this reality, with Netflix only score one slot in the top ten most-watched streaming movies of 2023. Coming in at number ten (behind nine movies that all played in normal theatrical releases first before they went to streaming) was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a sequel to a theatrical release film. Given the company's lack of pay transparency, infamously bad labor practices, contempt for the livelihood of movie theaters (and more importantly, all the working-class people whose paychecks depend on those locations), normalization of subpar cinematography standards, and support of transphobic comedians, it's hard not to relish Netflix's struggles both at the Oscars and in the original film space. Once again, tech bros are figuring out that they can't just buy being an artist or talented. Turns out throwing lots of money at the wall can't suddenly turn your studio into Janus Films. Who knew?

Something that fascinates me, though, is that Netflix's future may hinge less on Oscars. I'm sure Sarandos is still harboring his desire to get up on that Oscar stage someday, but Netflix's recent company changes indicate a tweak in its media priorities. Scoring a $5 billion deal to be the home for WWE Raw for ten years already had folks questioning how much money the streamer will be putting into original movies in the future. Then there was the news last week that Netflix will be airing its first-ever live boxing match (between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson). One can expect such star-studded boxing matches to factor heavily into Netflix programming in the future, which will eat away more at the company's finances. When you start seeing Jake Paul programming on Netflix, it's a clear sign that the company is moving away from the days of Atlantics.

Then there's the hiring of Dan Lin as the new head of Netflix's film division, replacing Scott Stuber. Before coming to Netflix, Stuber was one of the leaders of Universal Pictures before becoming a go-to producer at the studio behind Minions. Stuber's hiring indicated Netflix wanted to create partnerships with the sort of prolific and even award season-friendly filmmakers that Stuber always rubbed shoulders with at Universal. Lin, meanwhile, is a producer known for branded genre fare, like the Sherlock Holmes, LEGO, and It movies. Netflix clearly wants Lin to work his magic at elevating the streamer's genre movies from The Gray Man and Heart of Stone to something more resembling Lin hits like The LEGO Movie. Save for producing The Two Popes, Lin isn't well-versed in award-season titans, suggesting that his time at Netflix will be more about mainstream cinema and less about Andrew Dominik's Blonde.

Of course, Netflix may have already been shifting away from the days of Roma/All Quiet on the Western Front/The Power of the Dog long before Dan Lin got hired. As of this writing, Netflix's 2024 slate doesn't have a lot of major dramas that conceptually seem like they could be Oscar fodder beyond The Piano Lesson (the streamer's newest Noah Baumbach and Guillermo del Toro movies won't be ready until 2025). Granted, Netflix purchasing a trio of major films at the 2023 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival does suggest the streamer could eventually buy up a big 2024 Cannes or TIFF title that takes them to the 97th Academy Awards. However, for now, it does look like Netflix's future in its tormented original films division may not be just focused on securing Oscar glory. The middling viewership numbers for Netflix 2023 award season contenders like Maestro, Pain Hustlers, and Fair Play are almost certainly giving the streamer further incentive to focus its cinematic exploits.  Sorry Ted Sarandos, you'll have to wait (possibly forever) to hear someone thank Netflix in a Best Picture acceptance speech.

* Yes, CODA won the Best Picture Oscar after eschewing a traditional theatrical release. It launched in the wonky year of 2021, when theatrical release patterns were still in flux. Plus, Apple TV+ has switched over to prioritizing theatrical runs.