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Why is Netflix no longer interested in making award-winning movies and prefers critical failures that we all watch?

Who needs Scorsese when you have a cheesy action movie?

Why is Netflix no longer interested in making award-winning movies and prefers critical failures that we all watch?
Randy Meeks

Randy Meeks

  • January 21, 2025
  • Updated: January 21, 2025 at 7:49 AM

How long has it been since you opened the Netflix movie page thinking “Oh, how exciting, I’ve been wanting to see this”? It’s usually like going to the supermarket for tomatoes and ending up with a cucumber: it’s not what you wanted, but it’s the only thing left and it was on sale. I mean, you go to watch a prestigious film and end up with an action movie with two moderately famous actors that is entertaining but you’d never watch a sequel of. An entire industry based on mediocrity. And to think that from 2019 to 2022 they were close to winning an Oscar on more than one occasion! But, simply, they’ve lost the desire, and right now… the effort isn’t worth it for them.

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Now comes the good part

It’s hard to forget the campaign that Netflix launched to announce that they were aware their movies weren’t great, but now they were going to step up their game. It was at the end of the last decade, when they were already having success with series and winning Emmys (after crossing the usual barrier of raised eyebrows and sighs from a somewhat immobile industry). They got to work, and recruited a good handful of top-level directors to whom they gave absolute freedom.

Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, Noah Baumbach, David Fincher, Adam McKay, Aaron Sorkin, Jane Campion, the Coen Brothers, Bradley Cooper, Fernando Meirelles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edward Berger, Ryan Johnson, Paolo Sorrentino, Guillermo del Toro, the Obamas, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Ron Howard, Lin-Manuel Miranda, J.A. Bayona, George Clooney, Zack Snyder, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee… Not only are they names that have defined the history of modern cinema: they are all people who signed with Netflix to make the movie of their dreams, without restrictions. They got the pleasure of doing what they wanted. Streaming, prestige. Spoiler: it doesn’t turn out very well.

And the fact is that Netflix had to face, right from the start, an industry that didn’t understand that films not released in theaters could be considered cinema, whether they were directed by Scorsese or anyone else. For years, at the prestigious Cannes festival, there was an annual -we can say it openly- uproar of booing the Netflix logo when it appeared before the films in competition. It was inevitable that at awards like the Oscars there would also be people who felt this way: the film is very good, it deserves the award, but… How are we going to give it, if it’s shown on a smaller screen?

This is not a film

This is how The Power of the Dog ended up losing to an absolutely inferior film like CODA, and Roma had to watch as the award for Best Picture was taken by the pastiche that was Green Book. It was unfair, yes, but also a statement of principles by the rest of the industry: you can play with us, but you are not one of us. Not yet, at least. The problem is that if Netflix has shown anything over the years, it’s very little patience (if a series doesn’t get enough views in the first week, it gets canceled without hesitation). And after the experiment and feeling like it has burned money on absolutely nothing, it has cut its losses.

From having two films nominated for the Oscar in 2021 and 2022, we move to one in 2023 and 2024. And, predictably, none in 2025. Well, on paper and for much of the public, yes, of course, because the company’s new strategy is to buy films at festivals and pass them off as their own. Emilia Pérez, for example, is exclusive in the United States, but that doesn’t mean Netflix financed and developed it: they take the laurels, but none of the effort. And it’s not necessarily bad! Since the industry has decided to turn its back on them regardless of what they have in hand, they just need to use their wallet to achieve the prestige they can’t otherwise attain.

There was a time -short, indeed- when Netflix seemed to bet heavily on auteur cinema, not only with films but even with documentary or animated shorts. But, in the end, they seem to have understood their place in the market: it is not that of the quality cinema provider, but that of the churro shop that will give you new churros every day of the week. They taste the same as always, require no effort, cost more than they should, you are aware that there are much tastier foods, but they satisfy you enough to come back the following week for more. Occasionally, they manage to release a hit that transcends the barriers of streaming itself and becomes a social phenomenon instead of something disposable.

After the fiasco of movies like Maestro or Bardo, don’t you see it as normal, at least from a purely business perspective? Why make an effort if someone else is going to take the laurel crown? What sense does it make? The world of quality cinema may have lost, out of sheer pride, the last chance to remain relevant in an audiovisual landscape where, increasingly, the latest novelty in streaming, whatever it may be, takes precedence over an ambitious black-and-white film made by a prestigious filmmaker. Perhaps if they had taken better care of what they had instead of punishing it relentlessly, we would be talking about a new giant on par with Paramount or Columbia. However, neither cinema nor awards. Here, sadly, no one wins… And much less the viewer. It’s okay: by now, we are quite used to it.

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