'Everything Everywhere' strikes blow for indie filmmaking at Oscars
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Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture at the Oscars, logging another victory for not only traditional theatrical studios but indie studios.
The film, from independent mini-major A24, won seven Oscars - more awards than any other picture at the 95th Academy Awards, outrunning not only traditional movie studios but also the streaming studios that have thrown their weight around in recent Oscar ceremonies - notably Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), which is still waiting for its Best Picture win despite a number of nominations.
Netflix has had eight films nominated for Best Picture, but has yet to win the Academy's most coveted prize - and its All Quiet On the Western Front was among the most nominated pictures, with nine nominations, and won a still-strong four awards, second-most among nominated movies.
Everything Everywhere's Michelle Yeoh took the Best Actress honor, while Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for The Whale, also an A24 production. In all, A24 won nine Oscars, with Netflix second-best with five awards.
Not only did A24 take the Best Picture honor - as a studio, it swept the major acting awards, with Jamie Lee Curtis winning Best Supporting Actress and Ke Huy Quan winning Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
It wasn't a huge 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) drew a sound Oscar for Top Gun: Maverick, the highest-grossing picture of 2022. Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) - which beat Netflix to the first streaming-originated Best Picture last year with CODA - won Animated Short Film, and Amazon/United Artists (NASDAQ:AMZN) won adapted screenplay for Women Talking.
The Oscars don't always have an outsized impact on related company stocks - profit and loss statements tend to respond more to $600M grosses from the likes of Marvel movies (DIS) - but there could be a positive effect for those drawing extra attention for the awards. After years of Netflix (NFLX) vying unsuccessfully for a Best Picture win, last year Apple (AAPL) drew attention to its nascent efforts in moviemaking with a top win for CODA, the first such win for a streaming-originated film.
Meanwhile, a focus on prestige is still a point of emphasis for certain media companies: Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav, for example, has cited the company's critical acclaim as an important factor going into a relaunch of its HBO Max/Discovery streaming offerings.