The 2023 BAFTA nominations have been revealed – and Netflix executives will be patting themselves on the back over a job well done.
The world's best streaming service landed 21 nominations ahead of this year's ceremony, with Netflix's All Quiet on the Western Front amassing an astonishing 14 nominations alone, including selections in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. The German foreign language movie has also made BAFTAs history, with 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 – which landed three nominations – Blonde, The Good Nurse, The Swimmers, and The Wonder, who all scored one nomination apiece. These flicks have appeared in our best Netflix movies list at some point in the last 12 months, too, so we clearly know our stuff.
Deserved as these nominations are, though, the hard work isn't over for Netflix. In fact, it's only just begun. How so? Because the streaming giant actually needs to win some BAFTAs if it wants to be viewed as a true titan of the entertainment industry.
It goes without saying that Netflix has had problems over the last year. From losing millions of subscribers to canceling fan-favorite shows, the streaming company has come in for plenty of criticism from fans and the media. Add in the financial woes it's suffered as a result of viewers canceling their subscriptions, and Netflix endured a difficult 2022. Well, save for some megahit shows, such as Stranger Things season 4, Dahmer, and Wednesday, all of which appear on our best Netflix shows list.
Netflix, then, could do with a few more wins – and the 2023 BAFTAs provide the perfect opportunity to prove it can rub shoulders with the world's biggest studios.
The problem for Netflix, though, is that its success rate at previous BAFTA ceremonies is – to be frank – extremely poor. Prior to the 2023 ceremony, Netflix's in-house TV shows and movies have accumulated 107 BAFTA nominations. However, those nominations have only been turned into actual triumphs on 14 occasions – a win ratio of just 12%. Even worse, Netflix has never won a single BAFTA film award, with its 14 trophies instead coming for titles in its TV show lineup.
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 that coveted Best Picture Oscar win for some time now, yet it lost out to Apple TV Plus drama flick CODA for Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars. That shock defeat surely continues to rankle with Netflix's executive team, so a few 2023 BAFTA wins – especially in the Best Picture category – would go some way to easing that pain.
More so than that, though, a couple of big victories would prove Netflix has the ability to hang with the industry's big guns. Vast amounts of money are pumped into streaming services – according to a June 2022 article from The Hollywood Reporter, Disney was expected to spend $33 billion on its 2022 Disney Plus slate, while Netflix would fork out $17 billion. However, the streaming industry is still viewed (in some quarters) as the little brother of the movie and traditional TV sectors. That's despite some of the world's biggest films 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 viewed as one of the entertainment industry's leaders, it needs to start winning more awards. As soon as it starts to regularly pick up prizes at the world's most prestigious award ceremonies, it'll be taken more seriously by naysayers who still expect the streaming industry to implode in the next decade or so. With an exciting and stacked 2023 film slate, which includes highly-anticipated Zack Snyder film Rebel Moon, Netflix will be hoping that's not the case any time soon.
With 21 nominations at the 2023 BAFTAs – 23 if you count Matilda the Musical, which Netflix distributed outside of the UK – Netflix won't have a better chance to lay down a marker to its rivals. It'll be hoping, then, that it won't be so quiet (metaphorically speaking) on the western front come Sunday, February 19.
For more Netflix-centric coverage, read up on the best Netflix documentaries, the best short movies on Netflix, all new Netflix movies, and all of the Netflix cancelled shows to date.
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