You know it was a pretty notable Oscars when Will Smith assaulting Chris Rock on live television wasn't even the most significant thing that happened.
The Best Picture award winner was CODA, an Apple TV+ comedy-drama film about a child of two deaf parents trying to both help her family's fishing business and pursue her dreams of being a professional singer (at least according to Wikipedia). This makes it approximately seven Oscars in a row that the winner of Best Picture was a movie almost nobody watching had actually ever seen.
I think this win is extremely significant for at least two reasons. First, as has been well-documented at this point, Apple TV+ is now officially the first streaming service to win Best Picture. The torch has been passed off from the major Hollywood studios to the Silicon Valley juggernauts. It has been a long time coming — it seems like Netflix has been the most highly nominated studio for a number of years at this point — but breaking this Best Picture ceiling really sends a strong signal. Second, CODA now joins Parasite on the list of "non-traditional" movies to win Best Picture recently (Parasite being in Korean, and CODA staring predominantly deaf actors).
I could be off here, but I can't help but feel like these things are connected. I think one of the major benefits of streaming services is it removes the movie theater as a gatekeeper to content. Theaters have to appeal to the masses to sell lots of tickets, but streaming services have much more flexility to cater to specific niches and interests (which was a major part of Netflix's strategy in its early DVD days). And given how non-traditional both Parasite and CODA are, it appears that people are beginning to recognize how incredible some of this more niche content can be that may not have had broad enough initial appeal to succeed in theaters.
Although calling me a "movie buff" would be the overstatement of the century, I think it's exciting to see companies with as much money as Apple and Amazon get rewarded in events like the Oscars for making relatively risky content. We're going to continue seeing gargantuan content budgets from all the major streaming players over the next few years, and if CODA is any clue, they're feeling validated to take chances on niche or experimental content, and subscribers are going to benefit by getting a wealth of unique new viewing options. Play ball.
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