Could Apple be on the cusp of scoring a Best Picture win at the Oscars?
The company is teaming up with Paramount on Martin Scorsese's highly-anticipated upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Deadline reports. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro and is based on the book of the same name, and Apple will now be financing the film, which reportedly has an eye-popping budget of up to $200 million. The film was previously set up at Paramount, but the studio was "nervous" about the price tag, the report says.
Killers of the Flower Moon will now be an Apple original movie, though Deadline reports it's still getting a wide theatrical release from Paramount, a significant piece of the news considering Scorsese's last streaming movie, The Irishman, didn't receive that from Netflix. Major theater chains require movies they show be exclusive to them for about three months, but Netflix prefers to debut its films on streaming sooner than that, and the two parties were unable to reach an agreement. The Irishman instead got a limited theatrical release.
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Some Oscars prognosticators have speculated that Netflix's status as a disruptor of theatrical norms held it back from Best Picture in recent years, but Apple could potentially avoid that problem with a traditional, wide theatrical release. Netflix's The Irishman never quite became the major awards contender that Roma did a year earlier anyway, but it was still surprising when it ended up scoring zero wins despite all the critical acclaim. Netflix itself only got two wins at the Oscars this year after landing 24 nominations.
Thus far, no streaming service has ever won Best Picture at the Oscars. Unless something goes terribly wrong with Killers of the Flower Moon, though, expect Apple to be right there in that Best Picture race looking to make history in the not too distant future.
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