The Red Envelope: All Roads Lead To Netflix In The 2020 Oscar Race

Welcome to The Red Envelope, an awards season column devoted to Netflix’s expected domination at the 2020 Oscars. Each week between now and Jan. 13, when nominations for the 92nd annual Academy Awards are announced, we’ll focus on a major Netflix original film and expertly predict its total Oscar count. But first…

A lot can happen in a lifetime, but plenty can happen in four years. It was only 2015 when Netflix fully committed to awards season with its push for Beasts of No Nation. “The great experiment begins!” New York Times awards expert Kyle Buchanan, then working for Vulture, wrote in his weekly Oscar column. “Cary Fukunaga’s wartime drama is pulling in great reviews, but will the film’s day-and-date Netflix debut be considered a debit? At the Beasts premiere this week, Netflix head Ted Sarandos told me he thinks the streaming format will actually spur more voters to watch it: While other films could get lost in a stack of screener DVDs, Beasts will show up every time Academy members launch Netflix. Let’s see if that persistence pays off.”

It didn’t for Beasts of No Nation. Despite great reviews, the film was snubbed across the board when the 88th annual Oscar nominations on the morning of Jan. 22, 2016. Not even Idris Elba — who, at the time, was considered a favorite not just for a nomination but as a potential winner — was singled out by an Academy seemingly caught flat-footed by progress. (Elba later became the first person to ever win an award from the Screen Actors Guild without previously receiving a corresponding Oscar nod for the same work.)

It’s hard to imagine the same fate befalling Beasts of No Nation were it released this year. Following the success of its 2018 awards slate — which saw Roma nab 10 total nominations and three wins, including best director for Alfonso Cuaron — Netflix has sought to corner the Oscar market in 2019 with buzzy and acclaimed films like The Irishman and Marriage Story. The company has received 29 Oscar nominations since 2013 (trivia: its first came for the documentary The Square), but Netflix could conceivably double that total number when competitors for the 92nd annual Academy Awards are revealed in early January.

None of this has happened by accident. Netflix and its Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, have invested heavily in winning Hollywood’s highest honor: the Oscar for Best Picture. A brief tick-tock on that sausage-making: Early last year, Netflix hired Lisa Taback, the awards strategist behind dozens of successful Oscar campaigns — including many for disgraced executive Harvey Weinstein, up through 2011’s The Artist); earlier this year, according to the New York Times, the service spent a reported $30 million to promote Roma; and then, during the 2019 Oscars broadcast where Roma was such a presence, Netflix also planted its flag for the 2020 broadcast. That’s when the announcement trailer for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman debuted. It featured this closing text: “In theaters this fall … and on Netflix.”

Scorsese had worked on The Irishman for years. But Paramount, which originally had control of the film, balked at the high price tag before Netflix stepped up to foot Scorsese’s bill. (With a cast of heavy hitters like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, and significant visual effects work required to de-age those stars to play their characters over the span of decades, The Irishman reportedly cost north of $150 million to produce.) “For us to get Marty at Netflix was a big thing,” Netflix film head Scott Stuber said earlier this year to The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a big win. So that was one thing. And then the economics. We have enough subscribers that we think the movie can deliver on. Thankfully he over-delivered.”

It would be easy to chalk that up to executive hype, but anyone who has spent even five seconds on social media over the last two weeks definitely understands what Stuber meant. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, The Irishman seemed to be the only movie worth discussing online (it feels like more people care about Anna Paquin’s brief, near-wordless appearance in the film than her entire run on True Blood). Last week, The Irishman won best picture from the New York Film Critics Circle and grabbed significant Oscars precursor recognition from the National Board of Review and AFI. Early Monday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association bestowed The Irishman with five total nominations, including best motion picture drama and best director for Scorsese. Of the 57 original movies debuted by Netflix this year — by comparison, as noted by THR, Warner Bros. released 21 movies — The Irishman stands as its best shot yet to win best picture.

On her campaign website, Elizabeth Warren sells T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: Warren has a plan for that.” Maybe Netflix could appropriate that for its Oscar hopes. Because even if The Irishman were to falter, Netflix could still win best picture. Barring a major snub, Netflix will likely possess 33 percent of the best picture market next year, with Marriage Story (which paced all Golden Globes contenders with six nominations) and The Two Popes (four Globes nods) joining The Irishman among the nominees; there’s an outside shot 80 percent of the best actor nominees (De Niro, The Two Popes‘ Jonathan Pryce, Marriage Story star Adam Driver, and Dolemite is my Name legend Eddie Murphy) and 60 percent of the best supporting actor contenders (Pesci, Pacino, The Two Popes‘ Sir Anthony Hopkins) will have starred in a Netflix film; American Factory, a documentary produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, is the favorite to win an Oscar in its category as well. It’s almost quaint to think this started with lower-profile films like Beasts of No Nation and Baumbach’s previous Netflix release before Marriage Story, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected); now, to paraphrase a line said about Pesci’s mob boss character in The Irishman, all roads lead to Netflix.

“The idea these films got made is a minor miracle,” Sarandos said to Vanity Fair in 2017 as part of a piece that explored Netflix’s burgeoning push for Oscars. “The idea they’re going to be seen by millions of people is something to celebrate. The fact that people stay engaged and in love with films, that’s the prize.” Come next year, there’ll almost certainly be an actual prize for Sarandos to enjoy, too.

Christopher Rosen is a writer and editor who lives in Maplewood, New Jersey and still thinks Lady Bird should have won best picture. Follow him on Twitter: @chrisjrosen