Apple Gets Shut Out at the Oscars

In a surprise twist, Apple walked away from the 96th Academy Awards last night without a single Oscar win despite having accumulated 13 nominations across two of its most recent big-screen releases.

While Ridley Scott’s Napoleon only garnered nominations in the Production Design, Costume Design, and Visual Effects categories, Killers of the Flower Moon had been shortlisted for 10 Academy Awards, including the much-coveted Best Picture, along with Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor.

However, the Best Picture unsurprisingly went to Oppenheimer, which also landed Christopher Nolan the Oscar for Best Director and Robert Downey Jr. the award for Best Supporting Actor, shutting Apple and Killers of the Flower Moon’ director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro out in those categories.

Meanwhile, the Best Actress award went to Emma Stone for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, rather than Killers’ Lily Gladstone. This was the one award many pundits expected the Apple Original would walk away with, as Gladstone was seen as at least neck-in-neck with Stone and would have also been the first Indigenous American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress.

Poor Things also took the Oscars away from Apple for Costume Design and Production Design, two awards that both Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon were both in the running for, while the Oscar for the only other category that Napoleon was vying for, Best Visual Effects, went to Godzilla Minus One instead

Killers of the Flower Moon was also nominated for Film Editing, Cinematography, Music (Original Score), and Music (Original Song). Oppenheimer took the top award in most of those categories as well, although Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie beat out “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from Apple’s production.

The shutout likely comes as a disappointment for Apple, which was undoubtedly hoping that Killers of the Flower Moon would help it repeat its historic Best Picture win for CODA from two years ago. Ironically, while Apple’s 13 nominations gave it a better showing than last year’s mere two, it did receive the Best Animated Short Film award for The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.

Interestingly, Apple walked a much longer road to acquire CODA, and despite being released under Apple’s banner, it was originally a film festival pick that the company simply bankrolled after picking it up for a record-breaking $25 million at Sundance and then spending about another $25 million to market it.

By contrast, Killers of the Flower Moon was produced under the Apple Original Films label, in partnership with Paramount, after Apple acquired the rights four years ago. It’s the first high-profile film to be released by Apple on the big screen for a full theatrical release window, and was estimated to have cost around $200 million to produce. With Apple’s two subsequent Hollywood releases, Napoleon and Argylle, the company has reportedly spent $700 million on its latest three blockbuster films while only taking in $466 million at the box office.

Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon are said to be profitable despite their lower box office take, making up the shortfall in sales and rentals through premium video-on-demand (PVOD) services like Amazon Prime and iTunes, plus a surge in subscribers when the films finally debuted on Apple’s own streaming service.

Still, Apple wasn’t the only streaming service to do poorly at the Oscars this year. Despite 19 nominations across 11 films, Netflix came away with only a single win in the Best Live Action Short Film category for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. That’s one award better than Apple this year, but still a letdown for a streaming service that typically cleans up with multiple awards — even if Apple did beat it to the Oscar for Best Picture in 2022 and still retains its crown as the only streaming service ever to receive the Academy’s highest honor.