Sunday’s Oscar broadcast certainly made headlines – though not in ways the Academy would have expected – after a great moment when actor Will Smith took the stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock. Rock had made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pickett Smith, who has a shaved head and has spoken publicly about her hair loss. In the United States, the sound was cut off as Smith shouted obscenities at Rock upon his return to office. Later in the play, Smith won the Best Actor Award for his performance in King Richard, giving a long, bizarre speech in which he called himself “a tough defender of his family.” The actor also apologized to the Academy, but not to Rock. Going to the ceremony, the focus was on the competition between Apple and Netflix, which claimed to be the first streaming service to win the Best Picture award. Both had spent tens of millions of dollars on the Oscar campaign, which would send a strong message to A-list directors and actors about the ability of tech groups to offer Hollywood’s top prize. In the end, CODA, Apple’s first Oscar nominee, emerged as the winner of Best Picture. It was the first film to win the top Oscar since its debut at Sundance, the independent film festival, and as with other streaming nominees, it was released in a limited number of cinemas to qualify for the award. CODA also won the Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. The victory of Apple, the most valuable company in the world, will be seen as deeply symbolic in Hollywood, where traditional studios have been disrupted by streaming services. It also came after a turbulent year for the industry. Not only did Covid-19 place a heavy burden on movie-watching, but 2021 marked a moment when the financial foundations of the movie business began to loosen. Major movie studios, including Disney and Warner Bros., have released movies directly on their streaming services instead of allowing exclusive screening in cinemas, threatening performance-related bonuses awaited by top talent.

This has created tension in Hollywood between studios, which see streaming as the future of the industry, and directors, producers and actors. Netflix, the streaming industry champion, was the favorite at this year’s Oscars with The Power of the Dog, who entered the ceremony with 12 nominations after enjoying a strong run in the Golden Globes. Netflix was also nominated for Best Picture in the political satire Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. But The Power of the Dog won only one Oscar, with Jane Cambion winning the Best Director award. Unlike Apple, a relatively newcomer to streaming, Netflix has been working for years to get into Hollywood traffic. Ted Sarandos, his co-director, serves as head of the Academy Museum, which opened last fall with great admiration. The company also ran a costly campaign for its first Best Picture nominee, Roma, in 2019. Some members of the Academy have blamed the drop in ratings for the ceremony – only 10.4 million Americans attended last year’s awards, a drop of 56 percent from last year – on the failure to nominate commercially popular films. But Dune, which won more than $ 400 million, was the biggest winner of the night, with 10 awards.