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Everything everywhere all at once won Best Picture at the Oscars, earning another win for not only traditional theater studios, but independent studios as well.
The film, from independent mini major A24, won seven Oscars – more awards than any other picture at the 95th Academy Awards, overtaking not only traditional film studios, but also streaming studios that weighed in at recent Oscar ceremonies – notably Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), which is still awaiting its Best Picture award despite several nominations.
Netflix has had nine films nominated for Best Picture, but has yet to win the Academy’s most coveted award – and its In the west, nothing is new was among the most nominated pictures, with nine nominations, and won four consistently strong awards, the second among nominated films.
Everything is everywhere Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress, while Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for The whale, also an A24 production. In total, A24 won nine Oscars, with Netflix coming in second with five awards.
It wasn’t a big night for Hollywood’s traditional Big Five: Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) won a pair of Oscars: a costume honor for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and visual effects for Avatar: The Way of Water.
Paramount (PARA) (PARAA) won a sound Oscar for Top Gun: Maverick the highest-grossing picture of 2022. Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) – which beat Netflix to the top best streaming movie last year with CODA – won Animated Short and Amazon/United Artists (NASDAQ: AMZN) won the adapted screenplay for Women who speak.
The Oscars don’t always have an outsized impact on related company stocks – profit and loss statements tend to cater more to the $600 million gross of Marvel movies (DIS) – but there could be an effect positive for those who attract extra attention for rewards. After years of Netflix (NFLX) battling unsuccessfully for the Best Picture win, last year Apple (AAPL) brought attention to its budding efforts in film with a big win for CODA, the first such victory for a film created via streaming.
Meanwhile, the focus on prestige is still a point of attention for some media companies: the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) David Zaslav, for example, cited the company’s praise as a big factor in reviving its HBO Max/Discovery streaming deals.
