Over the past decade, streaming services have grown to become a giant of the media industry. Media companies have been creating their own subscription services, like Disney+, Prime Video, Neon, and Apple TV+, in a race to capture as much of this new market as possible. Despite this, the common idea around streaming services is that they’re mainly a place to access your favourite TV shows and movies, and not primarily a place to go for new and exclusive content. This is especially true for modern cinema and high-level film, which are predominantly considered coming from Hollywood or from art-house production studios. However, this perception has been shifting over the past few years with the release of several notable titles that end up receiving high critical acclaim. With the release of the 2022 Oscar Nominations, I believe that streaming services have become the new powerhouses of modern cinema.
Now it’s true that a lot of media, including critically acclaimed films, end up on streaming services after their release. For the sake of this article, I am considering films from streaming services to be films released straight onto streaming services, or those with a limited theatrical release in partnership with an exclusive streaming service. I am using this list from Time to see what Oscar nominated films are available exclusively on one service. Examples of this include The Power Of The Dog (Netflix), Being The Ricardo's (Prime Video), and The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple TV+). This article includes movies on streaming services that aren’t available in New Zealand, such as HBO-MAX or Hulu, as they are still part of the streaming industry internationally.
After looking at the 38 feature films which have been nominated for the Oscars this year, I have found that 16 of them (42%) are exclusive to a streaming service. Furthermore, tallying all nomination results, we can see that these 16 streaming films got 46.7% of the total nominations. This means the streaming of exclusive films outperformed the non-exclusive films in average nomination per film, a fact which is in large part due to The Power Of The Dog (Netflix) getting an outstanding 12 nominations.
This is a great thing for the accessibility of award-winning cinema. However, as more films become available from home, it becomes more important than ever to go to theatres and support local businesses. Several Oscar nominated films are available in theatres around New Zealand at the moment, including Drive My Car, Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, and many more. Streaming is clearly here to stay as a powerhouse of modern cinema, and if we let it, it might end up putting all theatres out of business. This is a trend we have seen even before Covid-19, with theatres declining in popularity due to the accessibility of movies from your own home. This hurts smaller local art-house theatres especially, as they have lower budgets and typically rely on popular mainstream movies to be able to support their ability to screen lesser known and independent movies. With the rise of mainstream popular movies going straight to streaming, we have to consider the wellbeing of our local cinemas when watching. If you have the means to do so, I encourage and implore you to go out to your local theatre to see some Oscar nominated films in the upcoming weeks before the Oscars air.
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