Yes, the Detroit Lions are in the Chicago Bears’ division. Yes, the Bears play them twice a year.

But we can’t help but root for the Lions as they make their improbable way through the NFL playoff gauntlet and are one win away from their first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

Chicagoans can relate. Lions Nation is one fan base that has seen almost nothing but failure in the nearly six decades that make up the Super Bowl era. One measly playoff win in all that time.

The Bears put their fans through a lot of disappointment on the field, verging on abject embarrassment sometimes. But we at least can (and do) continue to bask in the brutal majesty of the 1985-86 Bears. Lions fans have Barry Sanders highlights on YouTube, and that’s pretty much it.

Also, as fellow Upper Midwesterners, we ought to have each other’s backs, with the obvious exception of the Green Bay Packers, who’ve won quite enough, thank you very much.

The Lions’ success this year is sort of a football version of when the Cubs finally won it all in 2016, some 108 years after last doing so. Watching Lions fans, young and old, celebrate the two playoff victories in their own stadium reminded us a little of the multigenerational delirium that took hold when that Cubs team broke through at last.

It’s a lovely thing to see people bond over something shared, a phenomenon sports at its best promotes more often than just about anything else in this fractious age.

So have your day, Detroit! A lot of us are enjoying seeing folks in our neighboring state experience something for the first time even if they have more than a little gray in their hair.

If the Lions win it all, we will be glad for you. But that pledge is good for this season only.

Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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Whatever direction the Chicago Bears go with their quarterback situation, the new infrastructure for development at the position is coming together.

Four days after hiring Shane Waldron as their offensive coordinator, the Bears added another assistant to the mix with Kerry Joseph following Waldron from Seattle to become the new quarterbacks coach on Matt Eberflus’ staff.

The Bears announced the move Friday evening.

Waldron and Joseph coached together for the last three seasons, with Joseph serving as the Seahawks assistant wide receivers coach in 2021 and assistant quarterbacks coach in 2022 and 2023. Now he will take on much bigger responsibilities inside the quarterbacks room at Halas Hall. At a pivotal time for the organization, he will be tasked with overseeing the growth of either three-year starter Justin Fields or a prospect selected in April’s draft.

Joseph was part of the offensive staff in Seattle in 2022, with Waldron and quarterbacks coach Dave Canales, when quarterback Geno Smith revived his career with a Pro Bowl season that also earned him Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year honors.

Joseph, 50, will serve as the quarterbacks coach for the American Team at the Senior Bowl next week. He replaces Andrew Janocko, whom the Bears fired along with coordinator Luke Getsy this month after the team’s passing offense ranked 27th in the NFL averaging 182.1 yards per game.

The Bears still need to hire wide receivers and running backs coaches to fill out their offensive staff. They also are interviewing defensive coordinator candidates.

Sanjay Lal, who spent the last two seasons as the Seahawks passing game coordinator and receivers coach, was in the mix for the Bears receivers coach job but decided Friday to explore other opportunities, according to a source. The Bears remain in competition to fill out their coaching staff, as eight teams entered the month in the hunt for new head coaches. Six of those vacancies have since been filled, with those teams working to fill out their staffs.

Before his time with the Seahawks, Joseph was the passing game coordinator and running backs coach at Southeastern Louisiana in 2019. He began his coaching career at McNeese State, where he was the co-offensive coordinator for three seasons and worked with the wide receivers and quarterbacks.

Joseph was also a quarterback at McNeese State but moved to safety in the NFL. He played in 56 games over four seasons with the Seahawks. He also played quarterback in the Canadian Football League and NFL Europe.

The Bears on Tuesday officially hired Waldron, who was the Seahawks offensive coordinator for three seasons after four seasons with the Los Angeles Rams.

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LOS ANGELES — Four years ago, Netflix was faced with a formidable challenge to its dominance. Competitors including Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery invested billions of dollars to chip away at Netflix’s market share by launching splashy shows on their own streaming services.

For a time, it seemed that Netflix was vulnerable. The company lost subscribers for two straight quarters in 2022 despite gargantuan spending, raising concerns that its growth had plateaued.

But lately the tide has turned. Netflix has managed to maintain its position as the leader in subscription streaming, with 260 million paying customers worldwide, far more than its direct competitors. Netflix added more than 13 million subscribers during the fourth quarter. The Los Gatos, California-based company’s stock has surged roughly 90% during the last year.

As a result, many analysts have made a bold proclamation in recent months. The so-called streaming wars are over, they say. Netflix has won. As evidence, they point to rival studios that are now licensing more of their programs to Netflix, including HBO’s “Six Feet Under” and “Insecure,” after years of holding onto their big action movies and popular shows for their own platforms.

“Their competitors are so desperate to make money, they’re giving this content to Netflix,” said Jeffrey Wlodarczak, chief executive of Pivotal Research Group. “This is what winning is.”

Netflix executives, for their part, sound as confident as ever, even as the company continues to make changes, including a recent shakeup in its film business. There’s much more runway for Netflix to grow, Spencer Neumann, Netflix’s chief financial officer, said at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco on Monday.

“We are just getting started,” Neumann said. “Now we’re small in every measure. Every way we look at it, we’re less than 10% of the view share in every country in which we operate, and that’s a pretty small slice of pie.”

How did Netflix defend its bulwark when there are still multiple streaming services fighting for eyeballs?

The streamer has cracked down on password sharing, offering a cheaper ad-supported plan for cost-conscious viewers. Added restrictions on viewers who were borrowing Netflix accounts got people to buy their own subscriptions, helping the company increase net income to $938 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $55 million a year ago, while revenue rose 12.5% to $8.8 billion.

Since then, Disney’s Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max also have signaled they will tighten their limits on password sharing.

Netflix also diversified its content beyond scripted programs, adding more reality TV shows, non-English-language originals, live TV, games and sports documentaries to its mix.

And Netflix expanded its sports-related content. In January, the streamer announced it would become the exclusive host to WWE’s weekly pro wrestling show “Raw” in 2025, which analysts say will help boost Netflix’s advertising business and increase WWE’s global reach outside the U.S. “Raw” is the top show on the USA Network, where it brings in 17.5 million unique viewers over the course of the year, WWE and Netflix said.

“Introducing it to a new set of fans as well as servicing the existing fans that are either already Netflix subscribers, or will come over, to me either way is a win,” Brandon Riegg, vice president of nonfiction series at Netflix, said at a press event in Hollywood in January. “The truth is we don’t know how much bigger it can get. I think we’re all really bullish on it.”

A significant factor in Netflix’s lead is that it had a major head start, entering the streaming arena in 2007, much earlier than many of its Hollywood competitors. It set up production hubs in different countries around the world, including South Korea, where Netflix has had success with a pipeline of K-dramas that can be dubbed into many different languages. The company also built a robust platform with recommendations based on a user’s past viewing habits, with trailers and titles promoted tailored to their tastes.

“They built scale quicker than anybody else, and that scale in turn leads to a shorter road for a new original to become a hit because they have such a wider audience available to sample,” said Brandon Katz, industry strategist for Parrot Analytics. “They have done a very good job of maintaining their market-leading position in the streaming industry, even as competition and macroeconomic industry factors have thrown a lot of challenges at them.”

Meanwhile, Wall Street started to turn on legacy media companies including Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which had sacrificed traditional television and box office revenue to fuel their streaming ambitions. Stock market pressure encouraged those businesses to rein in their spending on direct-to-consumer operations.

Even Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger acknowledged Netflix’s technological prowess at a Morgan Stanley conference on Tuesday.

“We’re now in the process of creating and developing all of that technology, and obviously the gold standard there is Netflix,” Iger said.

“We need to be at their level in terms of technology capability.”

Disney+ has 111.3 million subscribers as of its first fiscal quarter (excluding Disney+ Hotstar). Warner Bros. Discovery counts 97.7 million subscribers in its direct-to-consumer category, which includes Max, HBO, Discovery+ and premium sports product in the fourth quarter.

Netflix also resolved some analyst concerns about its debt levels. In 2021, the streamer said it would no longer need to raise external financing for its day-to-day operations.

And while last year’s six months of Hollywood strikes hobbled film and TV production and thinned out studios’ TV and movie schedules, Netflix appeared to weather the disruption better than many rivals.

Striking writers and actors raised concerns about streaming services, blasting Netflix and others for not financially rewarding them enough when programs became hits. They demanded more data transparency and substantial increases in pay. Some people in the industry called last summer’s labor stoppages the “Netflix strike,” citing changes the company popularized in how the entertainment industry does business. Many productions, including work on the upcoming seasons for “Stranger Things” and “Cobra Kai,” were delayed due to the labor stoppages.

The Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA were able to achieve many of their aims in their new contracts. Nonetheless, Netflix continued to increase its subscriber base during the strikes. One of the titles that gained traction on Netflix over the summer was the legal drama “Suits,” a USA Network series that ran from 2011 to 2019 but gained a new surge of cultural relevance last year when it appeared on the service.

Production overseas also helped, as it is usually less expensive than producing programs in the U.S., analysts said.

“You can see how the content budget would get more bang for its buck if they could actually produce a ‘Squid Game’ every year here in America,” Katz said. “The more they’re able to get some of that South Korean programming, Indian programming, Spanish-language programming, to really kind of pop on the charts here in America, the longer their dollar goes, the less they have to rely on more costly American-made series.”

Two years ago, the future of Netflix was murkier as it navigated a correction in the streaming industry. At the start of the pandemic, streamers including Netflix saw massive growth as people sheltered at home and looked for ways to entertain themselves. But eventually the subscriber growth slowed down, with Netflix reporting a decline in customers in the first half of 2022. The hiccup was startling to investors, considering the sums the company was spending on content, and the stock tumbled.

Netflix laid off hundreds of workers and began investing in new areas of business, including launching an ad-supported streaming plan, after years of being averse to commercials on its platform. It acquired game studios and increased its live event offerings on Netflix with mixed results, including hosting this year’s SAG Awards and, recently, a series in which chef David Chang cooks for celebrities. It’s also held live reality-show reunions and stunt sports events, including “The Netflix Slam” tennis match.

But as Netflix continues to expand its customer base, it will face ongoing competition for customer time and money. Some analysts remain skeptical about the return on investment from the company’s movie strategy, which was a 70-movie schedule in 2021 and included big-budget blockbuster-type action movies like “Red Notice.”

In January, Netflix announced its film chief, Scott Stuber, was leaving in mid-March to start his own media business. His role will be filled by Dan Lin, CEO of production company Rideback, starting in April.

But Netflix has downplayed the notion that the company’s approach to original film is changing. Neumann said having original films on its service is an important part of the entertainment that Netflix provides and the value it delivers to its customers.

“The film business has come a long way. It’s a nice success for us,” Neumann said at the Morgan Stanley conference on Monday. “With Dan, we’re excited to take it to the next level. Just like everything we do. We’re trying to continue to improve, so we’re gonna build from there.”

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It’s peculiar to look back at the movie year 2023, so full of gratifying work in so many directions, from the vantage point of relatively early 2024. There isn’t enough in theaters these days, certainly not enough good stuff. In the big-budget commercial realm, “Dune: Part Two” is an outlier, not a harbinger. It’s a hit right now, as opposed to its original 2023 release date, due to writers’ and actors’ strikes, and to the stonewalling of producers and streaming companies expecting employees to come to the studio definition of “their senses.”

From our vantage point, last year feels more like last century. Did it really happen? Did the Barbenheimering of the universe really happen? How did a quiet, mellow beauty of a (relatively inexpensive) A24 release, “Past Lives,” find a global audience? It was almost as if the pandemic was a bad, collective dream, and we woke up as one and thought let’s go to the movies! I’ve quoted the play before, but not this particular line: In “Once in a Lifetime,” the 1930 Kaufman & Hart satire on Hollywood at an earlier crisis point, a studio mogul pines for the pre-talkie days when he was rich, on top and “even if you made a good picture, you made money.”

That was 2023. Even some good ones made money. But there’s a flip side to everything. The year that gave us the probable multi-Oscar winner “Oppenheimer” (worldwide gross: $958 million) indicates that certain phenomena cannot expect an encore. Christopher Nolan’s big noise, coupled with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” (worldwide gross: just shy of $1.5 billion), amounts to tragically little in the conglomerative debt loads blocking the movie industry’s view of a bright future.

Take “Barbie.” Its profits mean little to Warner Bros. Discovery. CEO Jeff Zaslav has billions to go before he sleeps, at least untroubled, and before the company stock recovers from its debt load. He’s vexed by the “generational disruption we’re going through,” as he said on a W.B.D. earnings call last year, quoted in a New York Times Sunday Magazine feature.

When you’re stuck with “a streaming service that’s losing billions of dollars,” he said, “it’s really, really difficult to go on offense.”

Yes. And when a billion-dollar smash means so little to a too-large company’s bottom line, something has gone crazy wrong with the business itself.

So we wait for miracles this year, and for a stronger, fuller slate in 2025. Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony marks Hollywood’s 96th festival of statuettes and humility. We’re still here, some of us watching, even. And while we’re still here, if we can’t take the time to cheapen the entire medium with a few Oscar night predictions, then we really have lost our way.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST PICTURE

“American Fiction”

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“Barbie”

“The Holdovers”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Past Lives”

“Poor Things”

“The Zone of Interest”

What will win: “Oppenheimer.” Made too much money to ignore; a tastefully assaultive technique kept it moving; also mostly very good.

What should win: “Past Lives.” My favorite of 2023, therefore deserving of the best picture Oscar. It’s automatic.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST DIRECTOR

Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”

Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”

Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”

Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”

What will win: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer.” Second directorial nomination, after “Dunkirk.” A new-style directorial superstar devoted to both film and digital and the largest possible screen experience.

What should win: Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest.” Because he co-wrote and then visualized a striking reminder that evil is an all-too-human construct.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST ACTOR

Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”

Colman Domingo, “Rustin”

Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”

Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”

Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”

What will win: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer,” and I only recently changed my prediction on this. Which means I’m probably wrong.

What should win: Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction.” Like Murphy, a first-time nominee; also terrific in nearly everything, including the leading role here, largely reactive but in Wright’s hands, more than a sounding board.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST ACTRESS

Annette Bening, “Nyad”

Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”

Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”

Emma Stone, “Poor Things”

What will win: Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Yes, it’s more of a supporting turn, and the film doesn’t give her character the emphasis warranted in the second half. But she’s excellent.

What should win: Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall.” A great, versatile genius at casual-seeming complexity.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”

Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”

Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”

Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”

What will win: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer.” Good work; disguised just enough (baldpate, specs) to wow people.

What should win: Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction.” Or, yes, Mark Ruffalo for “Poor Things,” the wittiest simultaneous under/overacting of 2024.

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Emily Blunt, “Oppenheimer”

Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”

America Ferrera, “Barbie”

Jodie Foster, “Nyad”

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”

What will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers.” Very, very good, even if the role lacks a third dimension as written; she has won everything under the sun leading up to the Oscars.

What should win: America Ferrera, “Barbie.” I’m alone on this, but there it is.

NOMINATIONS FOR ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“The Holdovers”

“May December”

“Maestro”

“Past Lives”

What will win: “Anatomy of a Fall.” It wouldn’t stun me if director/co-writer Justine Triet’s well-liked courtroom drama upsets the apple cart Sunday and wins best picture. Surely it’ll be many Oscar voters’ second choice, and with the weighted ballots, who knows? But it appears to have original screenplay in the bag.

What should win: “Past Lives.” Beautiful from the first, unheard conversation at the bar to the last, unspoken words just before the car arrives.

NOMINATIONS FOR ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

“American Fiction”

“Barbie”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

“The Zone of Interest”

What will win: “American Fiction.” Writer/director Cord Jefferson solved nearly all the potentially dated limitations in 20-year-old source material.

What should win: “Barbie.” Stuck, absurdly, in the wrong category — does basing something on a line of dolls constitute an “adaptation”? But either way, funny, rueful, perceptive, humane and alive.

NOMINATIONS FOR ANIMATED FEATURE

“The Boy and the Heron”

“Elemental”

“Nimona”

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

“Robot Dreams”

What will win: “The Boy and the Heron”

What should win: “The Boy and the Heron”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

“Barbie”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Napoleon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

What will win: “Poor Things”

What should win: “Poor Things”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST COSTUME DESIGN

“Barbie”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Napoleon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

What will win: “Poor Things”

What should win: “Poor Things”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

“El Conde”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

What will win: “Oppenheimer”

What should win: “Killers of the Flower Moon”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST EDITING

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“The Holdovers”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

What will win: “Oppenheimer”

What should win: “Killer of the Flower Moon”

NOMINATIONS FOR MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

“Golda”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

“Society of the Snow”

What will win: “Poor Things”

What should win: “Maestro”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST SOUND

“The Creator”

“Maestro”

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”

“Oppenheimer”

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“The Zone of Interest”

What will win: “Oppenheimer”

What should win: “The Zone of Interest”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

“The Creator”

“Godzilla Minus One”

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”

“Napoleon”

What will win: “Godzilla Minus One”

What should win: “Godzilla Minus One”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

“American Fiction”

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

What will win: “Oppenheimer”

What should win: “Poor Things”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST ORIGINAL SONG

“The Fire Inside” (“Flamin’ Hot”)

“I’m Just Ken” (“Barbie”)

“It Never Went Away” (“American Symphony”)

“Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” (“Killers of the Flower Moon”)

“What Was I Made For?” (“Barbie”)

What will win: “What Was I Made For?” (“Barbie”)

What should win: “I’m Just Ken” (“Barbie”)

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”

“The Eternal Memory”

“Four Daughters”

“To Kill a Tiger”

“20 Days in Mariupol”

What will win: “20 Days in Mariupol”

What should win: “Four Daughters”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

“The Teachers’ Lounge,” Germany

“Io Capitano,” Italy

“Perfect Days,” Japan

“Society of the Snow,” Spain

“The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom

What will win: “The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom

What should win: “The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST ANIMATED SHORT

“Letter to a Pig”

“Ninety-Five Senses”

“Our Uniform”

“Pachyderme”

“War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”

What will win: “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”

What should win: “Our Uniform”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

“The ABCs of Book Banning”

“The Barber of Little Rock”

“Island in Between”

“The Last Repair Shop”

“Nai Nai & Wai Po”

What will win: “The ABCs of Book Banning”

What should win: “The ABCs of Book Banning”

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT

“The After”

“Invincible”

“Knight of Fortune”

“Red, White and Blue”

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

What will win: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

What should win: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

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