Streaming giants play hero and villain in Oscar season

Kenneth Lonergan's "Manchester by the Sea," which Amazon plunked down $10 million for at the Sundance Film Festival last year, is widely expected to be among the leading contenders at the Academy Awards.

Netflix and Amazon are increasingly influencing the movie awards season, playing the role of both hero and villain in an industry where their entry into the movie business is welcomed and feared in equal measures.

Though Netflix gave its 2015 Oscar horse, Cary Fukunaga's "Beasts of No Nation," a wide theatrical release, it has largely focused on acquiring films to debut on its streaming platform.

Lonergan, the veteran New York playwright whose last film, "Margaret," became embroiled in lawsuits and acrimony before Fox Searchlight gave it a minuscule release, called his experience with Amazon "the most fancy treatment I've ever had."

Though Netflix, like Amazon, doesn't make viewing statistics available, its films have likely been seen by far more people, around the world, than they would have been in a limited theatrical release — and their makers pocketed bigger checks.

For a filmmaker like Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, ''Philadelphia), the loss of a theatrical release is painful.

Director Craig Atkinson, whose police militarization documentary "Do Not Resist," spoke out about what he described as Netflix's strong-armed negotiation tactics.

Under motion picture production head Ted Hope, Amazon Studios has gone after well-respected filmmakers and largely art house releases, including films by Jim Jarmusch (Paterson, ''Gimme Danger), Woody Allen (Cafe Society), Whit Stillman (Love & Friendship) and Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden).