And The Tech Companies that Most Influenced This Year's Oscars Are...
Which tech company did the most to bring you this year’s slate of Oscar contenders? Here are our nominations:
Netflix. In publicity terms, this may be the favorite: Count on the streaming service getting a massive PR payoff via Best Documentary nominee “The Square,” which Netflix acquired last year. “The Square” had done extremely well on the festival circuit, and the decision to pick it as one of its first “original films” seemed at least partly a gamble that the movie would make the Academy Awards short list, and that’s paid off.
Kickstarter. While this is getting less attention, “The Square” was partly financed via the famous crowd-funding site. The company points out that this is the fourth year in a row a Kickstarter-backed film has scored an Oscar nomination. (One of these, the short-form documentary Inocente, actually won its category last year.)
Apple. Without Siri, would we have “Her”?
Oracle. Okay, this is a little indirect, but if not for the tech giant founded by Larry Ellison, his daughter Megan Ellison (reportedly “backed by her father’s fortune”) may never have gotten into movie business. Today she’s a producer of two nominated films — “Her” and “American Hustle.” Not bad.
NASA. Yes, okay, not actually a technology company, but still: We have to give the tech organization that invented “moon shot” projects at least some credit for “Gravity.”
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