Three years ago, Hollywood was engaged in a fight over the future of cinema, with the Oscars as the boxing ring.
The delivery route was irrelevant, as a film could be viewed on an iPhone and still be a film. Theaters? What about ticket sales? It didn't matter.
Big screens are part of the definition of cinema, argued the Hollywood establishment.
And now?
A streaming service film will win the Oscar for best picture on Sunday if the predictions are wrong and something unexpected happens inside the envelopes.
The Power of the Dog could win the best picture trophy, according to awards handicappers. Most are not predicting a win for the nominees from traditional studios, such as Belfast and West Side Story.
The welcoming of a streaming service into the best picture club would be a big deal for an industry that is in turmoil. The Oscars are one of the lines of demarcation between television and film. The winner of last year's contest, which was from Searchlight Pictures, was mostly seen on the internet, but it played in more than 1,200 theaters.
I think there is a lot of the academy that doesn't know what a streaming movie is.
The digital forces that have changed music and television have been chipping away at cinema for a long time.
The disruption was accelerated by the Pandemic. Many theatrical films were released simultaneously in theaters and online by traditional studios. For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allowed films to skip a theatrical release and still be eligible for the Oscars. Previously, the academy required a perfunctory theatrical release in Los Angeles.
This is more than egotism. According to the consulting firm Parks Associates, more than 300 streaming services operate in the United States, which could lead to theaters becoming exclusively for superhero, sequels and remakes. Warner Bros. has slashed annual theatrical output by almost half and built a direct-to-streaming film assembly line. Amazon boosted its Prime Video service by acquiring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the old-line studio behind Licorice Pizza, which is nominated for three Academy Awards.
In a year when Hollywood largely failed to jump-start theatrical moviegoing, streaming services solidified their hold on viewers. The Motion Picture Association says global ticket sales are down from 2019. Theaters were closed for a long time in 2020. AMC Entertainment, the world's biggest theater chain, racked up $6 billion in losses over the past two years and its stock has dropped 66 percent since June. The number of subscriptions to online video services around the world grew to 1.3 billion, up from 864 million in 2019.
Mr. Spielberg's West Side Story, which received an exclusive run in theaters for about three months, was a flop at the box office. It collected about $75 million worldwide, against a production budget of $100 million and global marketing costs of $50 million. The film was branded a box office flop by Oscar voters. It received seven nominations, and is poised to win in one category, for Ariana DeBose as best supporting actress.
A lion in the fight to keep the Academy Awards focused on theatrical films is pushed aside because of Mr. Spielberg's presence in the current Oscar race.
West Side Story could win the best picture trophy if it came from behind. So could Kenneth Branagh. The academy voters turned off by the over-the-top campaign by the streaming service turned the prize to the Green Book.
The Justice Department sent an unusual letter to the academy warning that changes to its eligibility rules could raise antitrust concerns, because of the Oscars-centered clash between Old Hollywood and New. There was a push inside the 10,000 member academy to come up with a way to make sure that only films with robust theatrical releases were eligible for Oscars.
There are still flickers of resistance.
There are many great companies that like to throw around the word "cinema" without supporting it as a cinema. He was talking about the tendency by the majority of the streaming companies to limit a film's theatrical release, opting instead to release it on their apps.
Two people discover a comet. The president of the United States pays attention to other things when she hears bad news.
A theater director grieves with the death of his wife, as he mounts a production of Uncle Vanya.
In Paul Thomas Anderson's coming-of-age romance, a child performer who has hit maximum adolescent awkwardness is aging out of his professional niche. The story gets juices going after his encounter with 20-something Alana.
A grifter with empty pockets and a mysterious past joins the world of 1930s back-road carnivals. He starts cycling through women, including a clairvoyant whose husband once had a successful mentalist act.
Phil Burbank has been raising cattle on his family's Montana ranch for decades. A lifelong family dynamic is disrupted when George's brother is married to a widow.
Steven Spielberg's remake of one of Broadway's most celebrated musicals is a modern take onRomeo and Juliet.
It is a conversation for Mr. Quinn and others. He said that letting audiences control the presentation of a movie is antithetical to what movies are supposed to be.
You can change the way the film is edited by virtue of how you see it when you are in complete control.
Most filmmakers have waved a white flag. Apple TV+ is getting a film from Martin Scorsese, who also worked with the streaming service on his previous film.
streamers are willing to spend more for projects than traditional studios because they don't have to worry about ticket sales. In Hollywood, the eyeballs are where the young ones are, which is why streaming services are where the eyeballs are.
The only thing left for streaming companies to do is win an Oscar.
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