Apple TV+’s “CODA,” a heartwarming tale of overcoming adversity, has emerged as a surprise front-runner to win best picture at the Oscars on Sunday.
In the film, seventeen-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the sole hearing member of a deaf family – a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her life revolves around acting as interpreter for her parents (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur) and working on the family’s struggling fishing boat every day before school with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant). But when Ruby joins her high school’s choir club, she discovers a gift for singing and soon finds herself drawn to her duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) to apply to a prestigious music school, Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams.
Thomas Buckley for Bloomberg News:
A little over a year ago, the film… won top honors at the Sundance Film Festival and was sold to Apple for a record $25 million. Still, “CODA” was seen as a longshot, even after scoring one of the 10 best-picture nominations last month.
Now all that’s changed. The Producers Guild of America gave “CODA” its top award last week, and the director of its chief competition, “The Power of the Dog,” is getting heat for some controversial remarks. “CODA” is now tied as favorite to win best picture at the Academy Awards on March 27, according to the website GoldDerby.com, which tracks Oscar predictions.
If “CODA” wins best picture, it will mark a number of firsts: the first film from a streaming service to win Hollywood’s top prize, the first recipient of Sundance’s grand jury award to achieve that honor, and the first best-picture winner to feature a mostly deaf cast.
MacDailyNews Take: If CODA wins Best Picture, it will be a huge boon for Apple TV+ and vindication of Apple’s quality over quantity launch strategy. As the quantity of award-winning features and series piles up, so too will Apple TV+ subscribers.
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A good movie? Yes, but were there really enough LGBTQIAPK+ BIPOC characters played by LGBTQIAPK+ BIPOC actors to be a serious Oscar contender? (the ‘K’ is for kink, by the way)
People in the US do not seem to realize that CODA was not a worldwide AppleTV+ exclusive. In Mexico for example, the movie was distributed though Amazon Prime Video, not AppleTV+.
CODA was produced by Apple, and initially exclusively distributed on AppleTV+.
Eventually, they expanded the distribution to include theatres (in order to qualify for the Oscars).
“It’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s latest initiative to make Hollywood more equitable and diverse—more woke—by changing the rules by which films are eligible for Best Picture nominations. Here’s how it works: Starting in 2024, producers will be required to submit a summation of the race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status of members of their movie’s cast and crew. If a particular movie does not have enough people of color or disabled people or gays or lesbians working on the set—and what is “enough” will be determined by a knotty tangle of byzantine formularies—then that movie will no longer be eligible for an Oscar.”
By Scott Johnson -March 22, 2022
Los Angeles Magazine