I think AMPAS is making a tacit admission that they need to spice up the nominees lists with movies people have actually watched.
Can anyone here name the last couple "Best Picture" winners off the top of their head? I can't. Googling the lists of nominees, and their box office receipts (bolded were winners):
2020:
Nomadland — $39.5M ($3.7M domestic)
The Father — $24.5M ($2.1M dom)
Judas and the Black Messiah — $7.5M ($5.5M dom)
Mank — $0, Netflix release
Minari — $15.3M ($3.1M dom)
Promising Young Woman — $18.9M ($6.5M dom)
Sound of Metal — $0.5M ($0 dom; Amazon Prime release)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 — (Netflix release)
2021:
CODA — $1.9M ($0M dom; Apple TV+ release)
Belfast — $48.9M ($9.3M dom)
Don't Look Up — $0.8M ($0M dom; Netflix release)
Drive My Car — $15.4M ($2.4M dom)
Dune — $402.0M ($108.3M dom)
King Richard — $39.4M ($15.1M dom)
Licorice Pizza — $33.3M ($17.3M dom)
Nightmare Alley — $39.6M ($11.3M dom)
The Power of the Dog — $0.3M ($0M dom; Netflix release)
West Side Story — $76.0M ($38.5M dom)
2022:
All Quiet on the Western Front — $0, Netflix release
Avatar: The Way of Water — $2,045.9M ($602.0M dom)
The Banshees of Inisherin — $29.1M ($9.4M dom)
Elvis — $287.3M ($151.0M dom)
Everything Everywhere All at Once — $104.1M ($70.0M dom)
The Fabelmans — $21.8M ($15.1M dom)
Tár — $7.2M ($6.0M dom)
Top Gun: Maverick — $1,488.7M ($718.7M dom)
Triangle of Sadness — $22.3M ($4.2M dom)
Women Talking — $1.2M ($1.2M dom)
The only one from the 2020 list I've seen is Promising Young Woman, and I've only even heard of a couple others. The 2021 list is populated by movies I've mostly heard of, but again only one that I've seen (Licorice Pizza). The 2022 list? I've heard of all of them, and seen two (The Banshees of Inisherin and Top Gun: Maverick). Judging by box office, a ####-ton more people have also seen these movies, as compared to 2020 and '21.
Certainly the Covid pandemic was a factor in the box office receipts, but there were still movies out there making hundreds of millions of dollars. Nomadland wouldn't even get a whiff at being in the top 40 biggest movies of the year, and it was far and away the highest grossing of the nominees.
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