Coda has been named Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars, in a milestone (and shocking to some) win for the future of movies.
With this Academy Awards win, Apple becomes the first streaming service to win Best Picture, beating out Netflix's The Power of the Dog and Don't Look Up.
The Power of the Dog was seen by many as the frontrunner in the lead-up to this year's Oscars. However, Coda won three of the four major guild awards in the lead up to the Academy Awards. The musical drama won the top prizes from the Screen Actors, Writers and Producers' Guilds (The Power of the Dog, meanwhile, picked up the top prize from the Directors' Guild.)
The movie was nominated for three Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Sian Heder and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur. It also won both of those awards, with Kotsur becoming the first deaf male actor to win an acting award.
While Coda won all three of the awards it was nominated for, The Power of the Dog struggled on the night. Jane Campion's film won in only one of the 12 categories it was nominated in, with Jane Campion being named Best Director.
With this win, the film becomes the first movie since Ordinary People in 1981 to win Best Picture without any nominations in the craft categories.
It also marks the third time a film directed by a woman has won an Oscar for Best Picture, following The Hurt Locker in 2010 and Nomadland in 2021.
The Apple TV+ movie started picking up awards during its run at the Sundance Film Festival, where it picked up the grand jury prize. As such, the film becomes the first to win both prizes.
During Sundance, the film set a record for the most expensive acquisition from the festival, with Apple paying $25 million for the film. Deadline reported that Apple beat Amazon to the film.
Producer Philippe Rousselet led the acceptance speeches by saying: "Thank you to the Academy for letting our Coda make history tonight."
He later added: "It hasn't been an easy ride. From the first day of shooting when our cast and crew were supposed to be at 4 a.m. at sea fishing, when we were told a giant storm was about to hit us. It was only the beginning of our problems, but you've kept the boat afloat."
Coda (which stands for "children of deaf adults") is a remake of the French film La Famille Bélier. It stars Emilia Jones as the only non-deaf member of a deaf family, who begins to find herself through singing. Starring alongside Jones is Oscar winner Marlee Matlin (the only deaf actor to have won Best Actress) and Troy Kutsur, nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
In the lead-up to this year's Oscars, Heder told the AV Club: "The ride this movie has taken is a complete dream. And I remember before Sundance, when I knew that the festival was going to be virtual, I had no idea if anyone would be watching. And we didn't have a distributor in place. I was so fearful that the movie would never find its way out into the world and have no path forward. And so this has just been incredible."
Coda is streaming now on Apple TV+.
