Streamers narrowly avoided getting shut out at the 2024 Oscars: Netflix came away with just one trophy and Apple left empty-handed, after they garnered a total of 32 nominations.
Netflix collected its one trophy for Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story, in the live action short film category. The 40-minute film, with a cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes, is the first Oscar win for Anderson.
Heading into Sunday’s 96th Academy Awards, Netflix led all studios and platforms with 19 nominations across 11 films, including seven for Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” — which was shut out. Apple had picked up 13 nods, including 10 for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which also drew a goose egg.
Since 2017, Netflix has now won 23 Oscars in all. But the best picture prize continues to elude the streamer as “Maestro” lost out to this year’s awards powerhouse, “Oppenheimer.” Nor has Netflix won in the lead actor or actress categories, coming up empty this year after four noms (Cooper and Carey Mulligan for “Maestro”; Colman Domingo for “Rustin”; and Annette Bening for “Nyad”).
“Killers of the Flower Moon’s” nominations included one for Scorsese in the best director category. His only Oscar to date came in 2007 for “The Departed” (for director). In 2020, his mafioso pic “The Irishman” for Netflix was shut out at the Oscarsafter receiving 10 nominations.
Apple is estimated to have spent $215 million on Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. It also shelled out some $200 million on Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” with Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, which was nominated for production design, costume design and visual effects and came away with zero wins.
Apple TV+ was the first streaming service to win best picture, in 2022 for “CODA,” which also snared laurels for Tory Kotsur (supporting actor) and Siân Heder (adapted screenplay). Apple scored another Oscar in 2023, for “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” in the animated short category.
Meanwhile, at this year’s Oscars, Cord Jefferson won the award for adapted screenplay for “American Fiction” (which he also directed) from Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures. The film, starring Jeffrey Wright, debuted on the MGM+ streaming service March 8. (Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” which Amazon acquired for Prime Video, did not receive any Oscars nominations.)
Netflix’s single win at the 2024 Oscars came after it took home six last year, including for international feature film for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and its first animated feature film Oscar for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.”
In 2022, Netflix landed just one Oscar: Jane Campion’s win for directing “The Power of the Dog.” The year before that, the company had the most Oscar wins among all studios with seven, including two each for David Fincher’s “Mank” and George C. Wolfe’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” In 2020, Netflix won two Oscars (Laura Dern for supporting actress in “Marriage Story” and “American Factory,” produced by Barackand Michelle Obama, for documentary feature). In 2019, Netflix’s big winner was Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” — which picked up three Academy Awards, for directing, cinematography and foreign language film — and it also won in the documentary short category for Rayka Zehtabchi’s “Period. End of Sentence.”
Netflix’s “Icarus,” about Russia’s Olympics doping scandal, won best documentary feature in 2018, after the company bagged its first Academy Award in 2017 for docu short “The White Helmets.” Also in 2017, Amazon Studios banked three Oscars, which stand as its only wins to date: “Manchester by the Sea” won for actor (Casey Affleck) and original screenplay; and Asghar Farhadi’s “The Salesman” won for foreign language film.
