Nothing produced by Apple Original Films for Apple TV+ can win an Oscar this year. The nominations went out Thursday, and Apple TV+ didn’t score a single one.
Films that seem like Oscar bait — including Fancy Dance and Blitz — got totally snubbed.
No Oscars for Apple: Academy snubs TV+
Apple TV+ produces a wide range of series in a variety of genres. Many of these become very popular, win Emmys or both. Apple also produces films… though it might be easy to forget that. New TV series premiere every few weeks, while the Mac-maker introduces only a handful of movies each year.
Still, over the years some of these impressed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Last year, Martin Scorsese’s historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon scored ten Oscar nominations — including for Best Picture — and Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon earned three.
But in 2025, the total number of Oscar noms for Apple Original Films totals zip, zero, nada.
It’s a bit of a black eye for a company that is clearly trying to earn Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, etc. As it brags in recent press releases, “To date, Apple Original films, documentaries, and series have been honored with 537 wins and 2,545 award nominations and counting.” Those numbers didn’t increase today.
There are some Oscar wanna-bes
Apple produced a couple of films that had the potential to earn Oscars. No one expected the Matt Damon/Casey Affleck buddy comedy The Instigators to get any attention from the Academy, but the family drama Fancy Dance starring Lily Gladstone definitely had a shot at an Oscar or two. Especially since Gladstone won multiple awards last year for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, and her newest film was highly praised by critics.
And there’s Steve McQueen’s WWII drama Blitz. It seems the sort of film that might pick up a nomination. But no.
Instead, 13 nominations, including for Best Picture, went to Emilia Pérez, a musical about a drug cartel leader who fakes his death so he can go through a gender change. And Wicked and The Brutalist earned ten nominations each. The full list is available from the Academy.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
