No matter if it was by force or luck, it would appear that the Academy can no longer ignore Netflix at the Oscars. Last year, the big story was how the streaming service had finally broken through the barrier and was poised to have a big night at the most prestigious awards show of the year for films. And yes, Netflix did well in 2019. But in 2020? This is the first year that Netflix is in a dominant position.
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As revealed by this morning’s nominations announcement, Netflix officially leads all studios with the most nominations, 24. That’s four more than Sony Pictures (20), which is in second place. It’s also 9 more than the studio scored last year (15). The big film for Netflix this year is “The Irishman,” which scored 10 nominations. Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” was able to land 6 more for the streaming service. Of course, we have about a month to see which nominations will turn into actual trophies, but even if Netflix gets shut out, there’s no denying that the supposed bias against the streaming service is no longer an issue.
Netflix is going to be a part of the awards season conversation for good, film fans.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the 2020 domination of the Oscar nominations by Netflix is just how the traditional studios fared in comparison. Sure, Sony did well with its 20 noms (thanks in large part to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”), but when you look at Warner Bros, Universal, and Disney, the results are rather shocking.
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With 11 nominations from “Joker,” Warner Bros. should have been near the top of the studio list, but instead, finished with only 12 nominations. Universal, thanks to “1917” (10 nominations), also scored 11. And Disney, which has a whopping 7 films in the worldwide top 10 in 2019 (each earning more than $1 billion), was only able to land 17 nominations (Fox Searchlight, owned by Disney is a separate entity with 6 more).
Basically, the way Netflix was able to dominate 2020 is by not have just one strong Oscar contender. We said this almost a year ago when we looked at what Netflix was lining up for its award season run, and it seems as if the streaming service just played a numbers game. Where other studios only pushed one or two films over the course of the end-of-year campaigning, Netflix had about half a dozen strong contenders, with three of them earning two or more nominations.
Will Netflix earn its first Best Picture win, however? That is something we’ll just have to wait and see.