California, March 27 (BUS): Apple TV+ made history as the first streaming service to win a Best Picture Oscar for “CODA,” a touching drama about the daughter of a deaf father who pursues her passion for music.
It bought streaming service CODA for $25 million after debuting in 2021 at the Sundance Film Festival, and has been gaining momentum throughout award season, earning top honors from Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and Writers Guild.
“CODA” faced stiff competition from the popular Netflix western “The Power of the Dog”, which collected dozens of nominations. The film’s director, Jane Campion, received an Academy Award.
The Best Picture Oscar indicates how far the industry has come since 2017, when the Cannes Film Festival banned films that weren’t shown on the big screen from competing for its coveted award, the Palme d’Or. According to Reuters, it was a deliberate disdain for streaming services like Netflix.
As the global pandemic forced theaters to close in 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences modified the eligibility rules for the Academy Awards to temporarily change the requirement that a seven-day cinema screen in theaters be eligible. It represented a watershed moment for films that debuted on home streaming services.
The Best Picture Oscar is also a milestone for Apple TV+, which launched in November 2019 with a slate of original series and no library of movies and TV shows.
Apple TV+ saw a major breakthrough in September 2021, when the comedy “Ted Lasso” about an American football coach who gets a job with an English football club won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.
“If Apple wins the coveted Best Picture award with CODA, it will stimulate more A+ talent coming to Apple first (or in the top category)” and boost subscriptions, Daniel Ives, Wedbush Securities analyst, wrote ahead of the awards.
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