‘Ghosted’ Director Implies That Apple Used Algorithm Data Instead of His Own Vision

Streamers don’t always give creative freedom to filmmakers. That’s a fact.

Yes, if your name is Martin Scorsese or David Fincher then they’ll accept whatever you give them, but if you’re “Ghosted” director Dexter Fletcher? You have to ABIDE BY THE ALGORITHM.

Fletcher is basically insinuating that Apple want their movies to be short, sweet, and right to the point. They don’t care about a B-list director’s vision. Fletcher explained this during an appearance on Alex Zane’s “A Trip To The Movies” podcast:

“You can’t make a film for streaming in the same way you make a theatrical. You can’t. There’s different metrics and there’s a different approach.”

The film’s original opening sequence was, according to Fletcher, inspired by 1978's “Foul Play”, starring Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawk. Dexter had initially concocted a long shot of Ana de Armas’ character driving in the mountains, until the streamer shut it down.

Their reasoning? It came down to data that when viewers watch a film on streaming, if “something doesn’t happen in the first 30 seconds, people will just turn off.” Although he personally thought the roughly three-minute sequence was “great,” Fletcher ultimately agreed to make the “compromise.”

“What is a cinematic experience for me as a filmmaker…becomes, okay, [I’ve] got to adjust to retain my audience, you know.”

The algorithm prevailed. “Ghosted,” starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, has become the most watched movie debut to date in AppleTV+ history.

It’s goofy, in a non purposeful way. The acting is atrocious, the stakes are non-existent. I can’t say I finished the whole thing, maybe saw 90% of it. It was mind-numbingly bad, but the numbers were great for Apple.