As the global epidemic continues, streaming media platforms are making history.
With “listening girl” becoming the first streaming media film to win the Oscar for best picture, the streaming media film finally “came into the house” and won the mainstream recognition.
Poster of the movie “hearing girl”
The film was produced by Apple TV +, a streaming media platform owned by Apple less than three years ago, and finally defeated many competitors, including Netflix, the world’s largest streaming media platform.
Under the epidemic, offline cinemas have been strongly impacted, and the global box office revenue has been halved. Correspondingly, it is the overweight investment and rapid growth of major streaming media platforms around the world. Among them, there are not only traditional Hollywood film giants such as Disney and Warner Brothers, but also technology companies such as Amazon and apple to “join the fun” and jointly shake the Jianghu status of streaming media “boss” Netflix.
Before Apple TV + won the award, Netflix had rushed to the Olympics several times and won many awards except “best picture”. But in the end, the “breakthrough” feat of streaming media films at the Oscar was first completed by the “backward” apple without film gene.
Under the slowdown of Netflix growth, can apple, which entered the game in November 2019, take advantage of Oscar to become the leader of the new generation of streaming media platform?
Apple from behind
Since 2014, Netflix has started the journey of impacting the Academy Awards. During this period, it has spared no expense to seek cooperation with the original films of famous Hollywood directors.
Over the years, films produced by Netflix have won 116 Oscar nominations and eventually won 16 of them.
Netflix’s latest Oscar for best picture came in 2019 when its original film “Rome” was shortlisted for the Oscars with 10 nominations.
That year, this highly acclaimed film was considered to be very likely to win the best picture Award for the first time on behalf of streaming media works. Although Rome lost to the green book, Netflix’s strength in content creation can not be underestimated and has been widely recognized in the industry.
Netflix’s film “the power of the dog” is also the most powerful contender for the best picture of this year’s Oscar. The film has not only won 12 Oscar nominations, but also won many landmark international awards, including the Golden Globe Award, the British Film Academy Award, the critic’s choice film award, the American Film Academy Award and so on.
In contrast, the film “hearing girl”, produced by Apple TV +, did not do so well.
In 2021, apple fell in love with the film at the premiere of the Sundance Film Festival and paid $25 million to buy the distribution rights, setting the highest price in the film’s history at the festival.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, this low-cost film with a production cost of less than $10 million was only released in some cinemas in the United States on a small scale, and then launched on the Apple TV + platform.
In the outposts of various Oscar seasons, “hearing girl” is mediocre and too “quiet”. It was not until March 19 that the film accidentally won the highest award of the “American Producer Award”, which is regarded as one of the barometers of the American film industry, that there was a bit of suspense in the competition for the best picture of this year’s Oscar.
According to the New York Times, both apple and Netflix have launched active publicity activities to compete for the Academy Awards.
Apple spent $20 million to $25 million on the promotion of “hearing girl”, which costs only $10 million, while Netflix is expected to spend more on the promotion budget of “dog power”, which costs more than $30 million.
The final result of this year’s Oscar may make many Netflix fans sigh. But in fact, Apple TV +’s “catching up from behind” is more like an accident than the inevitable result of its long-term investment in content.
Under the epidemic, streaming media accelerated its rise
As early as 2017, streaming media films have begun to fight for the best picture at the Oscars, but they have been questioned by mainstream filmmakers.
At that time, Amazon Prime Video won many awards for its film “Manchester by the sea”, which was also purchased at Sundance Film Festival, and finally won the best actor and best original script, but failed to win the most important “best film” award.
In recent years, streaming media platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime video have shown strong interest in the Academy Awards, making or acquiring good films in order to take the lead in realizing the breakthrough in the Academy Awards.
But just imagining that one day streaming films will win awards has made many senior filmmakers “unacceptable”.
The famous director Spielberg once said publicly that Netflix’s works should appear on the competition list for the Emmy (the highest award in American television) and are not eligible for the Oscar.
Some traditional film studios agree. In 2019, Netflix’s “Rome” almost won the best picture, which made them very dissatisfied. They believe that “Rome” not only spends too much on public relations and marketing activities, but also has only been released in a small range in a few cinemas for just three weeks. It has not released box office data, nor does it comply with the rule that the film can only be broadcast online 90 days after it is released in cinemas.
The epidemic sweeping the world has changed this situation to some extent.
The dismal offline box office caused by the epidemic and the closure of a large number of cinemas directly promoted the transformation of films to online streaming media, and the streaming media platform ushered in a period of rapid development.
According to the theme report released by the American Film Association, in 2021, the global box office revenue increased from $11.8 billion in 2020 to $21.3 billion, with an annual growth rate of 80.5%. Nevertheless, the box office revenue in 2021 is only about half of the $42.3 billion revenue in 2019 before the outbreak.
Even AMC, the world’s leading cinema, once hovered on the brink of bankruptcy, with a cumulative loss of $6 billion in the past two years.
In contrast, the number of global streaming media platform subscriptions has increased rapidly.
As consumers spend more time at home, people tend to choose home video consumption. 2019 present