A Sign Of Things To Come? Amazon And Netflix Win Oscar Gold

Beware, movie studios and theater owners! Could this weekend's Academy Awards be a sign of things to come?

By bagging four Oscar golds among them, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Netflix, Inc. NFLX may have started a new chapter in the film industry — streaming internet services locking horns with major movie studios.

The Newest Chapter

Amazon Studios’ "Manchester by the Sea" brought the best actor award for Casey Affleck and bagged the gold for best original screenplay.

Amazon also fetched an Oscar for best foreign language film — "The Salesman." Amazon distributed the movie in the United States and Canada.

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On the other hand, rival Netflix hogged the limelight for its 40-minute documentary "The White Helmets," a look at rescue workers in war-torn Syria.

What These Statuettes Mean For Future Figures

The Oscar recognition could bring more subscribers to Amazon and Netflix’s streaming services and gives the much-needed fillip to their investments in original content.

On the investing front, this is great news as it could be the next leg of growth for Amazon and Netflix. Consumers are sometimes reluctant to watch streaming services for lack of quality original content, on which both firms are investing aggressively. May be their investments have started showing results.

If both Amazon and Netflix began producing quality movies, they could be a tough competition for movie studios in the long run, while making them a must-add in the subscriber’s list.

That said, the wins of streaming services movies at the Oscars worry many theater owners as they bring the additional option to a viewer to watch the movie at the comfort of their home rather than going to a theater.

But, Amazon has avoided the controversy by avoiding the movies on its platform for a certain period to ensure the movie get a theatrical release first. Both "Manchester by the Sea" and "The Salesman" is expected to be available on Amazon from May.

Netflix, in contrast, is showing the movies the same day they arrive in theaters.

If this is not enough, Loup Ventures’ Andrew Murphy expects Apple Inc. AAPL will win an Oscar within five years, which also happens to mark the amount of time it will take the company to scale its original content. Today, the company is spending less than $200 million in producing content, but Murphy thinks this figure will soar to as much as $7 billion within five years.