How Netflix Exploited Blockbuster Fatigue To Turn Hollywood Into An Underdog

Triple Frontier is a good movie. The J.C. Chandor-directed action melodrama, penned by Mark Boal and starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Garret Hedland, Charlie Hunnam and Pedro Pascal, isn’t a new genre classic or a towering artistic achievement. It starts better than it ends, and it seems somewhat unwilling to truly confront the morality of its story (especially after its heroes cross a line of no return), but it’s exactly what it promises. It is a polished, big-budget, star-driven, adult-skewing programmer that, once upon a time, would have been a standard Saturday night at the movies. We’ve talked a lot about how Hollywood doesn’t make movies like this anymore, but up until recently neither did Netflix. Warts and all, the Three Kings meets Treasure of Sierra Madre flick is exactly what was promised to us when Netflix announced its intentions to produce and release original movies.

To be fair, making movies takes time and you can’t necessarily expect an immediate turnaround, nor can you expect a movie studio, any movie studio, to immediately show the fruits of having learned from a given mistake. And that mistake, relatively speaking, was a flurry of Netflix originals that represented either a studio’s cast-offs (The Cloverfield Paradox), misguided would-be blockbusters (Bright), prestige dramas that just didn’t work (War Machine) and would-be hip adaptations (Death Note) that looked and felt like the worst-possible Hollywood version of the source material. For every Roma or Private Life, there were a number of genuinely unsatisfying or outright lousy Netflix originals that, if nothing else, showed the value of a studio development team and occasionally micromanaging executives. I don’t know what happened on Suicide Squad, but after seeing Bright I’m a little less likely to solely blame Warner Bros.

But to the extent that a movie like Triple Frontier or the viral Bird Box (which took over the Internet this past Christmas and may have been seen by as many as 40 million viewers in its first week) represent the future of the Netflix original, well, I am slightly encouraged. The Sandra Bullock post-apocalyptic thriller wasn’t some new horror classic, but it was a well-acted and well-structured high-concept potboiler. It was a “good” movie, one that would have looked at home on a Hollywood multiplex marquee back when a movie star and a high concept was enough to get audiences in the door. Even Triple Frontier isn’t so much the kind of movie that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore but rather the kind of movie audiences no longer pay to see in theaters. Did you see Thirteen Hours or Only the Brave in theaters?

We can debate chicken-and-egg (or horse-and-cart) scenarios, and yes Hollywood bears a big responsibility for convincing audiences that theaters were primarily for the biggest of big tentpoles. However, you can hardly blame a studio system that is attempting to serve moviegoers on a grand theatrical scale and is (unlike Netflix or Hulu) responsible for the financial performance of each respective release for offering movies that represent what audiences want to see. When Sony released Only the Brave (which is a masterpiece, by the way), Roman Israel, Esq., All the Money in the World and The Front Runner to mostly empty theaters, you can’t really blame them for hiring Jason Reitman to do a straight-up Ghostbusters 3. When audiences ignore McFarland, USA, Queen of Katwe, A Wrinkle in Time and Tomorrowland, you can’t blame Disney for tripling-down on superhero movies and live-action remakes of their animated classics.

As much credit as Netflix deserves for offering a deluge of comparatively diverse entertainment options, they play by a different ruleset compared to the studios. Had they snatched up Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, they would have gotten credit just for distributing the movie, regardless of the Oscar season controversies and whether anyone would have watched it. When Paramount makes a risky/challenging movie like Jennifer Lawrence's mother!, they get torn to shreds by paying audiences, mocked by the media and mostly ignored by moviegoers. They end up having to defend exactly the kind of movie that would be celebrated just for existing on Netflix while paying customers flock to It. Since we don’t have viewership numbers, we don’t know if Netflix’s #representationmatters projects (like the acclaimed-but-just-canceled One Day At A Time) are actually viewed in any relevant numbers. Since it’s about driving subscriptions, actual viewership is almost irrelevant.

But their motives are not benevolent. Netflix is a giant media company competing against other giant media companies, so (whether they are living off debt to the marketplace with content or playing dirty pool in the Oscar season) it’s not like they have to play by preschool rules. But if Netflix has its way, it will be a glorified one-stop-shop entertainment monopoly. Whether or not they can pull it off (they are still pulling in huge amounts of debt and are clearly valuing quantity over quality), I have little doubt that if they essentially take over the entertainment industry that they’ll be comparatively less diverse or inclusive in their offerings. As we saw with the Fox network and UPN, mainstream success sent those networks on a whiter and more masculine path. Diversity is how Netflix competes, but we have no guarantee that said diversity will continue if Netflix wins.

But the skewed irony of all of this, whether or not Steven Spielberg actually did say anything about blocking Netflix movies from the Oscars, is that the streaming giant, partially by capitalizing on Hollywood’s shortcomings (namely Tinseltown’s obsession with IP-driven, four-quadrant, global-friendly, multi-platform fantasy franchises) has turned Hollywood into a glorified underdog in their own industry. Moreover, Netflix has concurrently positioned themselves as the David to Hollywood’s Goliath even as they play by the kind of rules that Hollywood’s theatrical branches could never get away with. A movie like Bad Time at the El Royale is a win for Netflix just for existing, but its failure as a Fox theatrical movie means that it is indeed a failure no matter how much it represents what we claim Hollywood doesn’t produce anymore. Alas, up until recently, Netflix wasn’t really making those good variations on those movies either.

A few pulpy, three-star genre flicks (plus an Oscar-winning masterpiece that was merely acquired by Netflix for the sole purpose of chasing Oscars) do not a revolution make. But it is a slight bastion of hope, especially if Netflix really is going to represent the future of the narrative feature film (and possibly narrative episodic television). Triple Frontier and Bird Box are exactly what Netflix promised: big-budget, Hollywood-style star-driven, adult-skewing genre flicks that, because or despite a general lack of executive interference, turned out about as good as they might have been if funneled through the studio system. If Netflix really wants to be the place for mid-budget, old-school “movies-movies,” then the average Netflix original needs to be a lot better than it is right now. Now let’s just hope that Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is at least as good as Todd Phillips’ Joker.

In all seriousness, though, there's no doubt in my mind this will happen in some form. I do hope real-world festivals will continue, though, because there really is something cool about enjoying some new film with a like-minded audience in a nearly-full theater, without all the noise and other distractions of mainstream theaters AND home environments alike. And no f'n kids! A 'streamed' film festival would certainly put "eligible" films before a larger audience, albeit for better and for worse since they'd also be subject to that much more trolling b.s. than they currently face on the real-world fest circuit. Could be a blessing and a curse.

Netflix has announced that it will keep the New York City’s Paris Theater open through a lease agreement.

The venue, one of the oldest art movie houses in the United States and the last single-screen theater in New York, was shuttered earlier this year. It was re-opened earlier this month for a run of “Marriage Story” by New York filmmaker Noah Baumbach.

Netflix announced Monday a lease agreement to keep the theater open. The streaming giant said it plans to use the theater for special events, screenings and theatrical releases of its films. Terms of the lease were not disclosed.


“After 71 years, the Paris Theatre has an enduring legacy, and remains the destination for a one-of-a kind movie-going experience,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer. “We are incredibly proud to preserve this historic New York institution so it can continue to be a cinematic home for film lovers.”

The Paris is Netflix’s second venture into exhibition. The company has been in talks since April to buy the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood from American Cinematheque in what would be the first movie theater acquisition for the streaming giant.

The films will stream for free on the platform over 10 days, likely in late April.South by Southwest 2020 will see the light of day after all, albeit online rather than on the ground in Austin, Texas.

Amazon Prime Video is teaming with the festival to launch a so-called film festival collection. Filmmakers who had been scheduled to screen films at the fest were notified this morning and will be able to opt in. Some, who already have distribution with an Amazon rival, will likely choose to forgo the virtual festival. Those who opt in will see their films play exclusively on Prime Video in the U.S. for the 10-day virtual fest, which Amazon will likely launch in late April.

The online event will be available in front of the Prime Video paywall and free to U.S. audiences.

Filmmakers who choose to participate in the virtual festival will receive a screening fee. The setup does not mean that Amazon has acquired the films. Those looking for distribution will still have that option.