Apple Returns to the Oscar Podium with ‘F1’ Sound Win
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Apple made history at the Academy Awards four years ago when it took home a Best Picture Oscar for CODA. Some were hoping history would repeat itself with Apple’s Brad Pitt-led F1 racing flick this weekend, but the top Oscar was likely never in the cards for it. Still, Apple didn’t come away empty-handed, as F1 still got a win for Best Sound.
F1: The Movie was nominated in four categories — Best Picture, Film Editing, Sound, and Visual Effects — but it was also up against some stiff competition in each. Industry watchers considered it a long shot for the Best Picture from the very start — it was a bit surprising it even got nominated. Despite being the highest-grossing sports movie ever, the Academy rarely recognizes “popcorn” blockbusters in this category. The last time a pure sports-action film took away the Oscar for Best Picture was Rocky in 1977.
The other technical categories gave it more of a chance, but it was still up against some other serious contenders, including Avatar: Fire and Ash, Jurassic World Rebirth, The Lost Bus, and Sinners for Best Visual Effects, along with Frankenstein, One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Sirat for Best Sound.
While One Battle After Another got the final nod for Best Picture, F1 managed to beat it out in the Sound category, giving Apple its second big Oscar win after being shut out for the past two years.
To be fair, Apple started off at the Oscars with a pretty huge bang. Not too many studios can boast a Best Picture win as their first award. When CODA won Best Picture in 2022, it marked the first time any film from a streaming service had won the prestigious top award — a particularly huge coup for Apple, considering more established rivals like Netflix had been vying for the top Oscar since Roma was first nominated in 2019.
In fact, while Apple managed to walk away with the Best Picture for CODA on its first nomination, Netflix has now had a total of twelve nominations and zero wins, including four occasions when it had not one, but two films in the running. One of those was 2022, when CODA beat out Don’t Look Up and The Power of the Dog, and this year Netflix had Frankenstein and Train Dreams in the running.
While Apple had two Oscar nominations in 2021, neither were in the Best Picture category. Wolfwalkers was nominated for Best Animated Feature and Greyhound was actually Apple’s first film to be nominated for Best Sound, only to be beat out by Sound of Metal.
Following its big win for CODA in 2022, Apple walked away with Best Animated Short Film in 2023 for The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. However, while it scored a record 13 nominations for the 2024 Academy Awards, it ended up being completely shut out, despite Martin Scorsese’sKillers of the Flower Moon earning 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor. Oppenheimer swept most of those categories that year, picking up Best Picture along with a Best Director award for Christopher Nolan and a Best Supporting Actor win for Robert Downey Jr.
Things went even worse for Apple in 2025, when it received zero nominations, although it’s fair to say that 2024 wasn’t exactly a banner year for Apple’s streaming ambitions as it began cutting back on theatrical releases, perhaps saving its energy to prepare for the blockbuster F1 release the following summer.
By all accounts, that’s the strategy Apple intends to focus on going forward, putting most of its efforts into one or two big hit theatrical releases each year, while leaving its smaller projects on the small screen. There are already rumors of a sequel to F1, and the Oscar nominations and win, along with Apple’s new Formula 1 streaming partnership — which makes it the exclusive home of F1 racing in the US — will likely only bolster those plans.
