At the start of the 95th Academy Awards, host Jimmy Kimmel praised this year’s nominees as a batch of films that audiences saw “the way you intended them to be seen: in a theater.”
For nominees like “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Elvis” and the night’s biggest winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” that was true enough. But their box office success happened well outside of awards season. One more way the pandemic transformed film distribution is how it shifted the Oscars’ impact on audience interest from seeing films in theaters to streaming.
“The Oscars and awards shows in general are just no longer compatible with our modern media ecosystem,” said Boxoffice editor Daniel Loria.