All of Netflix’s Oscar season ducks in a row appear to be in order, as mid-October to mid-December will have what could be two straight months of Netflix awards prospects being released. Between Kathryn Bigelow’s White House thriller “A House of Dynamite” coming to Netflix on October 24th, Edward Berger’s “Ballad Of A Small Player” arriving on Netflix five days later on the 29th, “Nouvelle Vague” reaching theaters on Halloween before a November 14th Netflix date, “Train Dreams” coming to theaters on November 7th before coming to Netflix on November 21st, “Frankenstein” likely being in theaters in October before going to Netflix sometime in November, “Jay Kelly” premiering in theaters on November 14th before a December 5th Netflix date, and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” coming to theaters sometime in November before reaching Netflix on December 12th (not to mention, their Best Documentary Feature contender “The Perfect Neighbor” also expected to drop before the end of the year), Netflix is throwing so many films out for Best Picture consideration, it would be a shocker if only one makes it into the final lineup of ten. Netflix has suffered such a loss for the last three years, yet that followed three years of running with two films nominated for Best Picture. But after three straight years of really having only one movie to push for a nomination, will it be able to juggle getting two in again, regardless of which two are their last ones standing?
Between 2019 and 2021, Netflix pretty much had two Best Picture slots reserved per year, with “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story” in 2019, “Mank” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” in 2020, and “The Power of the Dog” and “Don’t Look Up” in 2021. But since then, Netflix has not had as many riches to spread around, as it only had “All Quiet on the Western Front” to push in at the end of 2022, “Maestro” to get in as the worst reviewed Best Picture nominee of 2023, and “Emilia Pérez” to overcome even worse reviews in 2024.
Counting its first near miss for a Best Picture win in 2018 with “Roma,” 2018-2021 was Netflix’s golden age of Oscar contention. Yet whether it was because sentiments hardened against Netflix and streaming films in the last few years, because Netflix couldn’t develop or acquire enough quality films like in years past, or because of errors in choosing which films to push early in the season, 2022-2024 has been an overall step backwards for Netflix as an Oscar player.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” only rose to be a likely Best Picture runner-up at the end of 2022, after Netflix exhausted all other possibilities and films that season before putting its full weight behind it. “Maestro” was supposed to be Bradley Cooper and/or Carey Mulligan’s Oscar coronation after years of near misses, but they and the film became afterthoughts in terms of contending for wins by the end of 2023. And “Emilia Pérez” was a far bigger Oscar season villain in many circles of 2024, long before it fell apart after the nominations for one heated reason or another.
Yet, despite the flaws of these sole Netflix nominees over the last three years, they were essentially all that Netflix had to work with in terms of getting into Best Picture. On paper, there’s no way that should happen for the fourth year in a row in 2025…
In most preseason predictions, both “Jay Kelly” and “Frankenstein” are favored to be the next Netflix double Best Picture-nominated duo. In other circles, some see Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” as a Cannes-to-Oscar possibility like “Emilia Pérez” was. Some see the potential in Kathryn Bigelow’s White House thriller “A House of Dynamite” if it does well at Venice and NYFF festivals. Some still see the third time being the charm for Rian Johnson with “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” and others have been pushing the quieter, more small scale “Train Dreams” since its Sundance premiere after invested interest for filmmaking duo Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar following “Sing Sing” last year. Either way, this should be a deep enough bench for Netflix to push multiple prospective Best Picture nominees.
At the least, Netflix is now one of those studios almost guaranteed to get their No. 1 film a Best Picture nomination every year, regardless of the rest of their slate. However, whittling down the slate to find and push a No. 1 option is another matter. It took most of 2022 until Netflix made “All Quiet on the Western Front” its main priority, while “Maestro” and “Emilia Pérez” were their top options from the start in 2023 and 2024 – if only because, for all their backlash, there was really nothing else on Netflix’s plate to challenge them for that position. In theory, that shouldn’t be a problem in 2025.
Right now, between the first look at “Jay Kelly” this week, its likely place in all the major fall festivals and Netflix’s past success with Noah Baumbach in “Marriage Story,” this is the easy choice as Netflix’s most significant push of the season. But if “Jay Kelly” underachieves and doesn’t live up to the hype at the Venice Film Festival, that would seem to leave “Frankenstein” – a movie from past Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, who also won a Best Animated Feature Oscar for Netflix with “Pinocchio” in 2022 – as Netflix’s next film up.
However, even if “Frankenstein” builds up hype at Venice too, will the most horror-averse Oscar voters be ready or willing to give “Frankenstein” and “Sinners” Best Picture nominations in the same year? If not, then the horror film that was actually a box office hit and the best reviewed film of early 2025 would likely have a leg up on “Frankenstein.” Then, if that helps bring about the worst-case scenario of both “Jay Kelly” and “Frankenstein” being disappointments, things would get a lot dicier for Netflix.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” would have to be significantly better than “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” to get the Best Picture nomination they couldn’t, instead of just settling for another lone screenplay nomination and/or perhaps consideration for Glenn Close in Best Supporting Actress. Like del Toro, Bigelow is also a past Oscar winner, yet will “A House of Dynamite” be as explosive and inflammatory as “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” or just a regular old direct-to-Netflix thriller like David Fincher’s “The Killer” turned out to be? And while “Nouvelle Vague” got its share of buzz out of Cannes, can it survive having otherwise merely good review scores and potential future backlash, in the way that “Maestro” and “Emilia Pérez” did for a time? As for “Train Dreams,” given how Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s last collaboration in “Sing Sing” fell out of Best Picture consideration last year, this one will need 100 times more luck on its side. And then there’s Edward Berger with “Ballad Of A Small Player” starring Oscar and possibly soon to be Emmy Award-winner Colin Farrell. After two back-to-back Best Picture nominations for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Conclave,” it would be unwise to count him totally out. At least Shih-Ching Tsou’s crowd pleasing “Left Handed-Girl” will likely be eyeing a Best International Feature Film nomination should Taiwan select it, along with Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominations.
For now, the odds are at least one out of two films in the “Jay Kelly” and “Frankenstein” duo will hit it big at Venice and TIFF, while any possible consideration for something like “Nouvelle Vague,” “A House of Dynamite,” “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” or “Train Dreams” would be a mere bonus. Though if both “Jay Kelly” and “Frankenstein” remain major contenders, Netflix won’t really need to push anything else for Best Picture. In any case, if Netflix were going to be the first studio in the modern era to get three Best Picture nominations it would be the first since Lionsgate in 2016.
From 2019-2021, Netflix got two films in and had the bench to do even more, which was almost a birthright – although maybe the pandemic and the initial rise of streaming also had something to do with it? Now, in these current and possibly harsher times for Netflix where the pressure seems to be on every year for the streamer to deliver, is there still an opening for it to be the biggest studio of Oscar season again, if only in pre-nomination season?
At this point, Netflix should try to get two films in Best Picture again, if only so at least one of them won’t be deemed the “villain” of the season by the internet – unlike “Emilia Pérez” in 2024, “Maestro” in 2023, “All Quiet on the Western Front” for the brief time when it was “Everything Everywhere All at Once’s” last real challenger in 2022, “Don’t Look Up” when it was one of the worst-reviewed Best Picture nominees ever in 2021, and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” while it was win-competitive in 2020. Frankly, it would be a win to recapture the days when it had Alfonso Cuarón’s ”Roma” as the last beloved obstacle to an Oscar season villain in 2018, and had both “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story” as beloved nominees in 2019.
Given that Baumbach is back with “Jay Kelly,” and that del Toro is now the past Oscar winner seeking another victory with “Frankenstein,” perhaps it is setting up to be 2019 for Netflix all over again. If it can at least recapture that for starters, maybe then it can think of making a new kind of history with wins in major categories besides Best Supporting Actress and Best Director. That would really make this a Netflix Oscar season unlike any that came before, no matter how many options it has left at the end.
Are you excited for Netflix’s upcoming awards slate this year? Which film do you think is their likeliest shot at getting a Best Picture nomination? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
