The 2023 BAFTA nominations have been revealed — and Netflix executives will be patting them on the back for a job well done.
The world’s best streaming service garnered 21 nominations ahead of this year’s ceremony, with Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front earning a staggering 14, including picks in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. The German foreign language film also made BAFTA history, its 14 nominations tying 2001’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy’s history.
Other Netflix nominees include Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio — who received three nominations — Blonde, The Good Nurse, The Swimmers, and The Wonder, who all received one nomination each. These flicks have appeared on our list of the best Netflix movies sometime in the last 12 months, too, so we clearly know our stuff.
While these nominations are well deserved, the hard work is far from over for Netflix. In fact, I’m just getting started. How is that? Because the streaming giant actually needs to win some BAFTAs if it wants to be seen as a true giant in the entertainment industry.
Needless to say, Netflix has had problems over the past year. From losing millions of subscribers to canceling fan favorite shows, the streaming company has been subjected to a lot of criticism from fans and the media. Add to the financial woes suffered as a result of viewers canceling their subscriptions, and Netflix is having a tough time in 2022. Well, save for some huge shows, like Stranger Things season 4 and Dahmer and Wednesday, all of which feature on our best list of Netflix shows.
Netflix, then, can pull off more wins — and the 2023 BAFTAs provide the perfect opportunity to prove they can court the world’s biggest studios.
The problem with Netflix, however, is that its success rate at previous BAFTA ceremonies is — frankly — pretty bad. Prior to the 2023 ceremony, Netflix’s in-house TV shows and movies had 107 BAFTA nominations. However, those nominations turned out to be actual wins on only 14 occasions – a winning percentage of just 12%. Even worse, Netflix has never won a BAFTA for movies, taking home 14 awards instead for titles in its slate of TV shows.
So this year’s BAFTAs represent a real opportunity for Netflix to prove itself on the world stage (from an awards perspective, anyway). The streaming giant has been chasing the Best Picture Oscar win for some time now, but it lost out to Apple TV Plus drama CODA for Best Picture at the 2022 Academy Awards. This surprising defeat sure still angers the Netflix executive team, so the A few 2023 BAFTAs — especially in the Best Picture category — would go some way to easing that pain.
More than that, though, a couple of big wins would prove that Netflix has the ability to hold on to the industry’s big guns. Massive amounts of money are being poured into streaming services — according to a June 2022 article from The Hollywood Reporter (Opens in a new tab)Disney was expected to spend $33 billion on the Disney Plus slate for 2022, while Netflix would spend $17 billion. However, the streaming industry is still seen (in some quarters) as the younger brother of the traditional film and television sectors. This is despite some of the world’s biggest movies and TV series being available to stream anytime, anywhere on platforms like Prime Video, HBO Max, and Paramount Plus.
If Netflix wants to be definitively seen as one of the leaders in the entertainment industry, it needs to start winning more awards. Once it starts getting accolades regularly at the world’s most prestigious awards ceremonies, it will be taken much more seriously by the naysayers who still expect the streaming industry to crash in the next decade or so. With its slate of exciting 2023 movies stacked, which includes Zack Snyder’s long-awaited Rebel Moon, Netflix is hoping that won’t be the case anytime soon.
With 21 nominations in the 2023 BAFTAs – 23 if you count Matilda the Musical, which is distributed by Netflix outside the UK – Netflix couldn’t stand a better chance of marking its rivals. It would be hoped, then, that it was not quiet (in a figurative sense) on the Western Front on Sunday, February 19th.
For more Netflix-focused coverage, read the best Netflix documentaries, the best Netflix shorts, all the new Netflix movies, and all the canceled shows from Netflix so far.