The Department of Justice is now involved in the Netflix/Oscars debate

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Over the last few weeks, the debate over whether or not movies debuting on streaming services should be able to compete for Oscars has intensified thanks to director Steven Spielberg pushing to keep them out of the competition. What has been a mostly mentally exhausting, petty issue to watch play out has now transcended into a full-blown legal matter as the Department of Justice has thrust themselves into the matter, saying banning movies coming from the likes of streamers like Netflix could violate antitrust and competition laws.

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Variety got ahold of a letter from the chief of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, to the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Dawn Hudson, and in it, Delrahim expressed concerns over potential new rules the Academy was thinking about making:

“In the event that the Academy — an association that includes multiple competitors in its membership — establishes certain eligibility requirements for the Oscars that eliminate competition without procompetitive justification, such conduct may raise antitrust concerns.”

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Delrahim’s letter continued, with him writing that “agreements among competitors to exclude new competitors can violate the antitrust laws when their purpose or effect is to impede competition by goods or services that consumers purchase and enjoy but which threaten the profits of incumbent firms.”

He later cited the Sherman Act of 1890, a law which prohibits “anticompetitive agreements among competitors.” Specifically, he wrote that if any of the new rules imposed by the Academy that limit the ability for Netflix and other streaming service movies from competing for Oscars, which could “diminish the excluded films’ sales,” that it would then violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

An Academy spokesperson said they received the letter and responded accordingly. They will hold their annual meeting on April 23 to discuss any new rules the Board of Governors wants to add.

The issue heated up after Netflix’s ROMA won several Oscars this year, including for Best Director (Alfonso Cuaron), which prompted Steven Spielberg (currently working with Apple for a new streaming series) to take the fight to the Academy’s Board of Governors to implore them to establish new rules that stop movies from services like Netflix from competing for Oscars. He’s expected to bring up the issue at the end of the month at the annual meeting.

Well, what seemed like a silly squabble now has the government involved, and it seems no matter how Spielberg intends to make his case that Netflix movies should be barred from Oscar competition it doesn’t seem like it will happen. It would be a dumb move to risk violating antitrust laws just to keep Netflix away, especially when the service is, in fact, bending to the usual model of releasing movies in theaters before they go to streaming. ROMA was in theaters two weeks before going onto Netflix, and the same will happen for Martin Scorsese's latest, THE IRISHMAN, this fall. Just let them play with you!