The Red Envelope: Netflix Led All Studios With 24 Oscar Nominations — Here’s How They Can Win Best Picture

Welcome to the Red Envelope, a weekly series focused on Netflix’s forthcoming domination of the 92nd Academy Awards. Read the previous entries on Marriage Story, The Irishman, The Two Popes, Dolemite Is My Name, and Netflix itself.

Netflix elbowed its way into awards season last fall with a slate of surefire contenders seemingly engineered to dominate the 2020 Oscar nominations. So it should be no surprise that Netflix did just that: The streaming service scored 24 Academy Award nominations on Monday morning, including two for Best Picture (The Irishman and Marriage Story). That number builds on last year’s Roma-driven success (Netflix landed 10 nominations for Alfonso Cuaron’s film, and five others overall) and almost doubled the company’s total Academy footprint (Netflix had landed 29 Oscar nominations in its history before Monday). Not bad, right?

No, not bad. And yet… it’s clear Netflix could have had more. What happened — and where do the nominations leave the streamer heading into the Oscars on Feb. 9?

First, let’s recap the Netflix 2020 Oscar nominations:

• Best Picture: The Irishman, Marriage Story
• Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
• Best Actor: Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
• Best Supporting Actor: Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes; Al Pacino, The Irishman; Joe Pesci, The Irishman
• Best Actress: Scarlett Johannson, Marriage Story
• Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern, Marriage Story
• Best Original Screenplay: Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes; Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
• Best Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Irishman
• Best Production Design: Bob Shaw and Regina Graves, The Irishman
• Best Costume Design: Sandy Powell and Christopher Peterson, The Irishman
• Best Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto, The Irishman
• Best Visual Effects: Pablo Helman, Leandro Estebecorena, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, and Stephane Grabli, The Irishman
• Best Original Score: Randy Newman, Marriage Story
• Best Documentary: American Factory; Edge of Democracy
• Best Animated Feature: I Lost My Body; Klaus
• Best Documentary Short: Life Overtakes Me

Netflix garnered recognition in every major category — except for Best International Feature, which feels like a good place to start recapping its snubs. Mati Diop’s Atlantics won honors after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May of last year and seemed poised to compete for runner-up in the Best International Feature category behind Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. Atlantics‘ exclusion from the nominations was one of Monday’s biggest surprises.

The other egregious snub for Netflix was Ruth Carter for her costume design work on Dolemite Is My Name — especially after Carter won this award last year for Black Panther. In fact, Dolemite Is My Name was completely shut out on Monday, leaving Eddie Murphy among the Best Actor snubs alongside fellow studio co-worker Robert De Niro for The Irishman. Last week, we mentioned the possibility that Dolemite Is My Name — which we predicted to grab three nods, including one for Da’Vine Joy Randolph in Best Supporting Actress in addition to Murphy and Carter — would land softly among the Academy, but its shutout was a big bummer for a movie so seemingly well-liked. Chalk that up to an Academy continually behind the times on representation, an Academy that unfairly penalizes comedy, or an unfortunate mix of both.

Where else did we miss? Red Envelope had pegged The Two Popes to land five total nominations, including Best Picture. It wound up with three in total, including Best Actor for Jonathan Pryce (we got that one!), Best Supporting Actor for Anthony Hopkins (we didn’t get that one!), and Best Adapted Screenplay — but despite that recognition in major categories, The Two Popes was not among the nine Best Picture nominees. Our other fail was with Marriage Story, which had six total nods — all of which we predicted — but couldn’t crack the Best Editing field (a pity, since Jennifer Lame’s work in bouncing between lead characters is one of the main reasons Marriage Story really connects).

How many Oscars will Netflix win?

It’s hard to imagine the Netflix awards team is too upset by those exclusions, not when the race for Best Picture is wide open and the streamer is well-positioned to win the biggest award with The Irishman. To wit: only three Best Picture nominees were also cited in Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Screenplay: Joker, Parasite, and The Irishman. (Why is Best Editing an important indicator, you ask? Only once since the 1981 ceremony has a movie won Best Picture without a corresponding Best Editing nomination: 2015’s Birdman. This year, expected Best Picture front-runners 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were snubbed in the Best Editing category, meaning if either were to win, it would be a history-making victory.) Of those three films, only two received a Best Ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild — an often unreliable precursor, but one that shows where the actors’ branch’s support might lie: Parasite and The Irishman.

Which means one of two things: Either Parasite will win Best Picture in what would be the biggest shocker in the history of the Academy Awards (hey, fingers crossed, Parasite ruled) or The Irishman could have enough broad industry support to become the consensus choice among actors, filmmakers, and Hollywood craftspeople.

FEARLESS FORECAST: Five total Oscar wins (Best Picture for The Irishman, Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern, Best Editing for The Irishman, Best Visual Effects for The Irishman, Best Documentary for American Factory)

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