Could Spielberg Prevent Netflix from Being Considered by the Academy? –

We’re just a little over a week post-Oscars, and already the conversations are beginning around what changes will or could be made to the Academy. Chief among them is Steven Spielberg, who this week is meeting with the higher-ups at the Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences, and will argue against Netflix films being considered for the Academy Awards. We can presume that Spielberg wants this to start as soon as possible, and that the crop of Netflix films this year, including a film by his old pal, Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, will have to compete at the Emmy Awards, where the appropriate category would be TV movie.

So now the big debates begin: who’s in the right? Will Spielberg be a powerful-enough voice to bar Netflix films from Oscar nominations? Will Netflix be willing to change their release platform to accommodate proper Academy rules? Is Spielberg just old-school and not willing or inclined to view Netflix films as films at all?

Starting with the easiest question, is Spielberg enough to sway the Academy to one side? Frankly, yes. Name me a more successful man or woman in Hollywood other than Spielberg. It’s pretty much impossible. He has 17 Oscar nominations to his name, three wins among them, and is pretty much considered a frontrunner to win everytime he has a film that’s Oscar-appropriate released. On top of that, he has a hand in several studios and virtually every project released by those studios (like this year as Executive Producer on both Green Book and First Man).

His biggest honor, however, and arguably most relevant to this situation, is his being the chair of the board of the directors branch of the Academy. He pretty much speaks on the behalf of the entire board of the director’s branch of the Academy, and that paired with his financial and experiential powers makes him, arguably, the most powerful man in Hollywood. So, if he has a beef with anyone, he has more than his name to back him up. Especially if other pro-film directors, like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan side with him, and if asked they probably would, Spielberg is enough to make the rest of the Academy consider barring Netflix-produced films.

This also begs the question: is Spielberg the one who began this conversation, or was it a consensus vote that came from the directors branch? Either way, the recent win by Alfonso Cuarón for the Netflix film Roma arguably triggered this conversation. We’ll get to the fairness question in a little bit, but it seems to me like this is something Spielberg started the conversation on, then others came in and agreed with him, at least in theory.

Next up, will Netflix, if asked, change their release pattern for their upcoming projects? Well, that’s frankly up to the brass at Netflix. Right now, their pattern seems to be releasing their original films in a same-date release, as in both in theaters and on their service on the same day. If you check with the official rules with the Academy, they are eligible at this time for Oscar consideration. The criteria is to release the film in a public theater for at least one week within the calendar year. If you want to run it longer than that, that’s up to the studio, but Spielberg and others argue that the films being viewed primarily by home-watchers with the streaming service qualifies the film as a TV movie.

This is something where some are arguing every film in the least few years is technically a streaming film, because that’s how most studios today are giving Academy voters access to their films. Instead of tapes and discs, like they’ve done before, the voters now get an access code to stream the films. Let me shoot that argument down with this: every other film released for Oscar consideration that wasn’t Netflix releases their films theatrically first, then looks to home markets like streaming. Netflix, with few exceptions, only stream their films and doesn’t release them theatrically. In essence, those who argue for streaming are punishing every other studio for doing the one thing that Netflix does, but in a way that doesn’t damage the integrity of the film.

Part of the reason why studios switched over to streaming for Academy voters is because of piracy. Back in 2015, The Revenant and The Hateful Eight were both pirated online before they were theatrically released, giving everyone a chance to see the films illegally before paying for them. While The Revenant and Hateful Eight both made money at the box office, would you feel good if your film, which you put money into, were illegally posted online before you could make some of your money back? Netflix does pour a lot of money into their films, and more money (if you believe the unofficial reports) into campaigns for their films, at least Roma, which ranged somewhere between $30-60 million. However, with so many memberships, there is an out to make your money back. The same argument can be made for Amazon and the other streaming services.

Do we have any evidence to suggest that Netflix will barter with the Academy? Well, they technically already have. While both Beasts of No Nation and Mudbound were both films that qualified for the Oscars, they were both widely criticized, chiefly by theater-owners, for releasing their films to homewatchers the same day theatergoers could pay to see them. As a result, Mudbound missed out on a Best Picture nomination, and Beasts of No Nation missed out on any nominations.

That did change this year, though. Both of Netflix’s top priorities with Academy voters, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Roma, earned multiple nominations: 10 for Roma and 4 for Scruggs. Part of the reason was the widely-covered change by Netflix to keep their films in theaters longer. They are still not reporting box office totals, which may be part of the problem for Spielberg and co., but they have changed in that way. And already Netflix is saying they’re considering to put The Irishman in theaters first before releasing it for homewatchers. If this was the problem that Spielberg has, this would be an easy fix for Netflix. And frankly, you also please fans who wish to see Netflix films on the big screen who don’t live nearby to Los Angeles and New York, where most of the Netflix theater releases have been.

However, if the theater-first, streaming-second idea doesn’t please the Academy and Spielberg, that is if the Academy sides with Spielberg, then Netflix has every right to say that the Academy is showing bias against them. While the Academy has thus-far seemed like the type of institution who will settle for something like this, there’s no guarantee.

Now we’ll get into the topic that Spielberg and several others have picked up on: are Netflix films really films? Well, they are, but if they don’t play in front of theaters, they’re not theatrically-released films. In the same way you can consider straight-to-video releases films, they aren’t going to count in the canon of theatrically-released films. That’s the clinical definition of it, but I get where Spielberg is coming from here.

When I want to see a film, I’ll plan on seeing it in a theater if it’s a new release. While I understand the benefits of seeing films at home, and I enjoy that experience, there’s something special about going to the movies. The experience of sitting in a dark room with 50-100 strangers and seeing something that can make you laugh with that many strangers, cry with that many strangers, or be scared with that many strangers is something you can’t get anywhere else.

So seeing something like Roma on the big screen would have been my preference, but since I didn’t have the option of seeing it on the big screen, I had to see it at home. While I was sitting at home, however, streaming the film, if I got bored (which I did multiple times through the first hundred minutes of the runtime), I could pause it, close out of Netflix, and come back to it later. You don’t get that option in a theater. You can leave the auditorium and come back, but you can’t rewind or pause the film; you’re going to miss something. Home experiences are totally different than theatrical experiences in that respect, and that’s something, unfortunately, that a lot of people take for granted.

So if you ask me if Cuarón and Netflix are fair for receiving their wins and nominations, I say, “Yeah, sure.” They met the qualifications, and the films were good (well, actually I don’t know, I didn’t see Buster Scruggs yet), but Roma is one of the best-directed films of the decade, so an oversight of not nominating Cuarón for Director would have been on the level of, say, Spielberg not getting nominated for The Color Purple. Hmm, maybe that’s where some of Spielberg’s argument comes from.

I’m really not too serious with that last comment, and Spielberg’s 17 nominations shouldn’t be anything to complain about, but I feel like there is a middle-ground that can be met here. Netflix can help extend theater experiences, which really are dying today, but Spielberg and his followers can also backup a bit from barring Netflix outright. If Netflix can extend their theatrical releases and postpone their streaming release, I think that should be enough for the purists at the Academy, who may be responsible for Roma’s Best Picture loss last Sunday. Who knows? Netflix can arguably bring in a bigger cash flow from their films that way. Maybe it goes like this: release the film in theaters for a couple of months, if it’s a big enough film (like The Irishman), it makes $20 million or more, then everyone who didn’t see it in theaters sees it at home, or those who did pay to see it before watch it again. It could happen.