The Oscars are Hollywood's infomercial. But the awards and movies are getting more niche

Los Angeles Times

28-01-2025

At its core, the Oscars telecast is supposed to serve as a three-hour infomercial for the movie business. But celebrating the year in film is a challenging task at a time when the motion picture industry is hardly in a celebratory mood.
It's not just the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, which destroyed the homes of many who work in movies and TV, both above and below the line, and which have cast a grim shadow over Hollywood's awards season economy. This at a time when a sluggish box office and a lack of employment in onscreen entertainment has already given the business a sickly Nosferatu-like pallor.
It doesn't help that, by general consensus of those who've spoken with The Wide Shot, that the group of 10 best picture nominees for the 97th Academy Awards is a bit underwhelming.
With no billion-dollar blockbusters in the mix, this definitely isn't a 'Barbenheimer' year. At the time of Thursday morning's nominations announcement, this year's crop had grossed $1.7 billion worldwide, down 37% from the prior year's $2.7-billion global haul, my colleague Josh Rottenberg reported. The lion's share of this year's box office tally comes from Universal's 'Wicked' and Warner Bros.' 'Dune: Part Two,' which each grossed more than $700 million.
The rest of the pack is a mixed bag, commercially speaking. Searchlight's 'A Complete Unknown,' Mubi's 'The Substance' and Focus Features' 'Conclave' were successful for their budget levels. But there's no denying that most of the pack — Neon's 'Anora,' Amazon MGM Studios' 'Nickel Boys,' Sony Pictures Classics' 'I'm Still Here' and A24's 'The Brutalist,' included — remains little seen by mainstream audiences, certainly in theaters.
'Emilia Pérez,' a de facto front-runner with a leading 13 nominations, is a Netflix movie, so its official box office count is zero in the U.S. (it grossed $11.5 million from international territories where it played in theaters).
The now long-ago expansion of the race to 10 best picture nominees from five, along with the increasingly international makeup of the awards voting body, have allowed more obscure pictures to get in, whether or not they really have a chance to win. It definitely helps explain the inclusion of the Brazilian drama 'I'm Still Here,' as well as the dominance of Netflix's divisive French-produced and Mexico-set trans-themed narco musical.
In some ways, the nominations reflect the current dynamics of the movie industry. The indie film sector is vital to the industry's health and produces great art, but the festival picks that typically garner Oscar voters' attention have suffered from declining cultural relevance. With the rise of streaming TV, video games and social media video, film is no longer at center stage.
Last year's Oscars telecast on ABC drew 19.5 million viewers, up 4% from 2023 thanks in part to the popularity of the movies being honored. But that's far down from the peak of more than 55 million viewers who watched the year of the 'Titanic' sweep in 1998, a TV phenomenon that it's safe to say will never be replicated.
According to David A. Gross's FranchiseRe movie business newsletter, the TV ratings for the two years after the COVID-19 pandemic (2022 and 2023) were down 28% from the three years before the pandemic, roughly matching the decline in box office attendance over the same period of time.
The studio rankings can tell us about the companies' priorities too. Universal Pictures and its specialty division Focus Features (with 13 and 12 nods, respectively) are still major players, while Disney shows little interest in the race beyond its Searchlight subsidiary and the animated categories. A24 and Neon are firmly established in the indie space, but there's still room for out-of-left field upstarts like Mubi, which beat Warner Bros. in the nominations count.
Netflix is still thirsting for its first best picture win after missing with 'Roma,' 'The Irishman' and a few others. The streamer, which has faced voter resistance because it avoids traditional theatrical releases, led all distributors with 16 nominations (not counting shorts). If it wins this time, it'll be taken as a sign that Netflix's anti-theater strategy is not as much of a liability as it once was, which makes sense considering how powerful the company has become.
But victory is far from assured. 'Emilia Pérez' has taken heat from LGBTQ+ critics for its treatment of transgender issues and from Latino critics for creating an inauthentic and insensitive portrayal of Mexico as a drug war-torn hellhole.
One redeeming aspect of the Oscar race is that it remains wide open, with no clear favorite, unlike last time with the 'Oppenheimer' bulldozer. 'A Complete Unknown,' 'The Brutalist,' 'Conclave,' 'Wicked' and 'Anora' can all claim some plausible path to victory, thanks to the motion picture academy's preferential ballot system that tends to favor broad consensus picks.
Last year was a bad one for movies overall. The U.S. box office fell 3% to $8.75 billion, which was down 23% from the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Global box office totaled about $30 billion, down 12% from 2023, a shortfall that was widely blamed on the writers' and actors' strikes that thinned out Hollywood's release calendar.
The film slate in 2025 is supposed to be better, though the first quarter still looks weak, with only 'Captain America: Brave New World,' Disney's 'Snow White' remake and maybe Bong Joon-ho's 'Mickey 17' expected to bring big business to theaters, Roth analyst Eric Handler wrote in a Monday note to clients. Things should pick up with the release of summer movies such as 'Jurassic World Rebirth' and 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps.'
Like fans of a beleaguered sports franchise, the movie business is always looking to 'next year.'
Awards season still has the potential to bring attention to smaller movies that desperately need such accolades to boost business. But as the Oscars and movies in general become more of a niche product, the show's influence will continue to shrink.
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Netflix ended 2024 strong, adding a record 19 million paid subscribers in the fourth quarter to bring its total count to nearly 302 million members globally, far exceeding analyst expectations. Revenue rose 16% from a year ago to $10.2 billion, while operating income surged more than 50% to $2.3 billion.
In other words, Netflix is kicking butt, thanks in large part to hit shows ('Squid Game' Season 2), movies ('Carry-On') and live programming ('Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson'). The password sharing crackdown and the ad-supported tier are working. So, of course, the company is raising subscription prices. Netflix is confident that you won't cancel. That's pricing power.
This comes as legacy media companies such as Walt Disney Co. are just now getting their feet under them in streaming. 'We're fortunate that we don't have distractions like managing declining linear networks and, with our focus and continued investment, we have good and improving product/market fit around the world,' Netflix said in a somewhat brash aside in its quarterly letter to shareholders.
Netflix's stock is worth more than $970 a share, up nearly 70% from a year ago. Whether analyst expectations are now set unrealistically high is a matter for debate, but the company has good reason to be bullish. Netflix accounts for less than 10% of TV viewing, meaning it has plenty of room to grow.
Its biggest threat, as analyst Rich Greenfield recently discussed on the 'Prof G Markets' podcast, is from YouTube and vertical video on TikTok and Instagram. These are all companies that think not in terms of box office receipts and overnight ratings but rather in how much of your attention they can capture a day.
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