Looking Back and Looking Ahead: What’s Happening In Hollywood

Hello and welcome to the latest installment of One Moore Hollywood Podcast. In this week's episode, our esteemed trio of hosts, Chris Moore, Katie Marpe, and Dennis De Nobile, discuss what industry topics and conversations have caught their attention over the last few months. They examine some of the questions on their minds lately, including those around the upcoming Academy Awards season and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors' strike. 

Do Oscar nominations mean the same as they did twenty years ago? Should streaming services be paying actors money based on subscriber numbers? Read on to find out what our hosts have to say.

Oscar Eligibility: The Theater Rule

An Oscar rule around eligibility–obvious to some and surprising to others–is that every movie nominated for an Oscar must have graced the screen of a theater somewhere, somehow. Thus, all straight-to-streaming films are out, not to be considered by the Academy. This rule was changed briefly during the pandemic, but Marpe points out that it was quickly put back in place once theaters opened back up. 

While this rule made perfect sense some twenty-odd years ago when there was no other option for quality film distribution apart from theaters, now it brings up questions of fairness and equality. Distributing a film to theaters is costly, and considering the economics of the entertainment industry today, lots of independent film producers don't have it in their budget. 

"The Oscars feel like a membership, like a pay-to-play thing. Before streaming, it was the natural distribution…now the people who have money will be nominated, and those who made a small feature that went straight to streaming will not be."

–Dennis De Nobile

So, is this rule causing the Academy to miss out on streaming gems that never made it to a theater? Do the Oscar nominations and awards hold as much weight as they used to, now that there's more content out there than ever? 

According to our hosts, yes, it's likely the Academy is missing out on some noteworthy movies by sticking with this rule. Or they're forcing those who want their films up for an Oscar nomination to spend a considerable sum of money on marketing a theater release they might not have if it wasn't required. Either way, it seems this rule isn't keeping up with the times.

As for whether the Oscar nominations matter as much as they once did, Moore isn't sure they do. The way he sees it, the Academy tends to go for more obvious picks when it comes to the winners for the main categories (an exception to this rule being the 2022 Oscar triumph of Everything Everywhere All at Once). 

This year, Moore says Oppenheimer is the Academy's most likely choice for major Oscar wins, being that it has become a huge commercial success and was directed by the great Christopher Nolan. However, Moore would love to see the decision go differently, perhaps somewhere new and unexpected.

The SAG-AFTRA Fight Continues: How Should Streamers Pay?

With the writers' strike ending with a deal both parties agreed on, the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike forges on, the union still holding out for a better deal concerning the lack of residual payments from streaming services. 

As other episodes of One Moore Hollywood Podcast have gone over in more detail, residual payments used to be actors' and writers' bread and butter, but the introduction of streaming made them nearly obsolete. The recent negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and streaming services have regarded the request for compensation for shows and films streaming on sites such as Netflix and Max. 

"The economics of this situation is allowed to change, but someone needs to make up for the fact that writers were living off the residuals checks, so they need a much bigger initial payout now that those are gone."

–Katie Marpe

While our hosts resonate with the frustration of how to calculate residuals based on subscribers, Marpe puts it clearly by saying that the actual problem is that the way people are being paid for their work has changed. No one is stepping up to figure out a viable solution except the actors themselves. The streamers need to figure out how to somehow pay the actors based on the success of the work.

Something needs to change.

Listen to the entire episode here: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or iHeartRadio.