The elite Hollywood directors that have been clamoring about the imminent demise of the “theatrical experience” need to man-up and accept the concessions being made by Netflix. Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, and Christopher Nolan have to accept that this is where cinema is headed and that Netflix has been Godsent in terms of producing viable adult drama. You know, the mid-tier budgeted movie ($ 40-50 million) that most people say Hollywood just does not churn out anymore because, well, there are monetary risks involved. And so, Netflix to the rescue!
I can see a future where the streaming giant still shows its “important” films theatrically, for a limited two-week engagement, whilst still having them stream online. I mean, nostalgia for celluloid will not COMPLETELY disappear, there will always be those that want to watch award-worthy films in theaters, akin to today’s boom of vinyl listeners. The Academy will no doubt maintain its rule that there has to be a theatrical engagement to qualify for Oscar. Netflix is leading the way with how it’s done.
Also, there will always be film festivals, their importance has intensified over the last few years due to the notion that the theatrical experience is diminishing, more tickets are being sold in Toronto, Venice, and Sundance, just to name a few.
What will populate multiplexes, instead, will be blockbusters, and lots of them, even if the superhero movie goes through self-combustion and people move on to the next fad, there will still be sequels, reboots, animation, and popular adaptations to invade the screen.
Barry Diller served for 10 years as the CEO of Paramount Pictures from 1974-1984, he came in at a time when Hollywood was going through its own intense changes, adult dramas were all-the-rage until “Jaws” and “Star Wars” showed up just a few years after Diller’s tenure began. And yet, he managed to circumvent all these obstacles and produce hits such as “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Terms of Endearment,” and “Beverly Hills Cop.”
Diller was interviewed recently and deemed Hollywood to now be “irrelevant.”
He added, “It was these six movie companies essentially [that] were able to extend their hegemony into everything else. It didn’t matter that they started it. When it got big enough, they got to buy it.”
“[But now and] for the first time, they ain’t buying anything. Meaning they’re not buying Netflix. They are not buying Amazon.”
“In other words, it used to be if you could get your hands on a movie studio, you were sitting at a table with only five other people. And so that table dominated media worldwide. That’s over.” —
At the moment, Paramount is trying to survive in the WB/Disney game of big studio machinery, but I predict that Netflix or Disney or WB or Amazon will purchase the studio, at some point. If Disney acquires Paramount, things will have gone too far, with the acquisition of several more franchises, including “Star Trek” and “Mission: Impossible” added to their recent acquisition of Fox. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Disney is the devil, they represent the end of American mainstream cinema as we know it.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.