At a time when one of the few genuinely exciting trends in the world of cinema is the growing popularity of repertory theaters screening old movies on film, taking a major library off the market would be yet another blow to the theater industry that Netflix is apparently keen to destroy entirely. As movie theaters have struggled with finding creative solutions to the problem of Hollywood’s substandard (and decreased) output, repertory cinema has been a rare bright spot.
Theaters like Metrograph in New York, the New Beverly in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Film Society (PFS) in Philadelphia, Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston, and Music Box Theatre in Chicago have thrived as young cinephiles have flocked to see old movies on the silver screen. Recent rereleases of films ranging from Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (only in IMAX 70mm) to Jaws to Kill Bill have enthralled moviegoers. Even more important, studies show that the supposedly “YouTube-addled” Gen Alpha actually prefer the theater experience to streaming, despite what Sarandos might say about the communal experience of a movie theater being “outdated.”
Rather than trusting Netflix to be stewards of such an important piece of America’s artistic and cultural landscape, they should turn over control of the archive to an institution like the University of California, Los Angeles, which already does a great deal of film preservation, along with the rights to license movies for rep screenings and physical media releases, the way Warner itself has assumed control of a number of old studio libraries.
Paramount, owned by Trump and Saudis, getting control of a major news network is much worse. Lesser of evils.
Netflix is after far more than the Warner Bros. movie studio — it wants to destroy cinema as we know it.
Totally not hyperbolic or anything.
What’s more, cable TV itself is in a death spiral — largely thanks to Netflix itself.
… oh no. Anyway…
“destroy cinema as we know it”
please, cinema has been destroyed for a good long while now and WB made good work of that themselves. yeah, lets go to the movie theatre to see yet ANOTHER reboot of the DC universe.
Yeah, where exactly is their evidence that Netflix is aiming to put a stop to the practice of old movies being played in theaters?
I’m against the hyper consolidation/monopolistic practices that have been occurring at an increasing rate over the last couple of decades, but this article seems misguided.
It could be more or less true. Theaters need a regular cadence of movies to keep afloat
But it’s a hell of a lot better than Larry Ellison getting WB.
If my choices are the death of movie theaters or everything turning into 24/7 trump fellatio, then the movie theaters can die.
For me personally, movie theaters need a lot more than just the newest movie.
Going to the movies is a worse experience than watching at home.
It’s really, really fucking expensive. And when everything else is also really expensive, this is definitely one thing that can be cut from the budget easily.
It’s not comfortable. Between kids and others being loud, cell phones, and just uncomfortable seating.
The selection of movies hasn’t been great either.
I may be inclined to more sympathy had theaters and cable providers made any effort to stay competitive in the, what, 15 years since streaming started to take off? These guys are about to get hit by an oncoming train that they’ve been standing motionless in front of for a decade, have made no effort to save themselves - barring, perhaps, having Nicole Kidman politely ask the train to stop - and are now at the last possible minute begging the engineer to switch tracks, even though it would run over like a dozen other people in the process and, really, there’s no guarantee the train would actually be going fast enough to hurt them beyond the word of some people that have, again, been sitting in front of an oncoming train for 15 years, one of whom is the guy in the tophat and handlebar mustache that tied all those other people to the tracks in the first place. Sorry fellas, you woulda had my condolences six years ago but now you’re on your own. I’ll be over here in my much cheaper boat with a five-meter-high stack of DVDs, which in this metaphor represents a five-meter-high stack of DVDs.
Also, I can’t make this fit the train metaphor, hasn’t Netflix been doing more theatrical runs recently anyway? Like, as recently as last week? Am I just completely misremembering that one K-Pop movie having to add screenings because too many people bought tickets, drawing a bigger audience than the competing Disney and Dreamworks movies in the process? If anything, these guys have got to be salivating at the idea of being able to charge people $19.99 for one movie plus arbitrary processing fees and 30 minutes of unskippable preroll ads.
Like if the cinema industry wasn’t crap already! Disney fucked it up with its Marvel and SW movies.
this article brought to you by Paramount
The Propaganda is in overdrive
I thought we generally hated mergers. Other than that though I’m out of the loop - why is this propaganda?
Oh, make no mistake, it’s still a bad merger. It’s just that someone was going to buy Warner either way, and the main competing bid was from Paramount-Skydance with the express purpose of gutting CNN to appease the strange grayish-yellow slime mold that’s been growing in the White House, because the news won’t stop telling people how slimy it is. Which, of course, gives the adherents of the slime mold reason to try and turn public favor against Netflix’s acquisition. Or something along those lines, I’d be lying if I said I was all the way in the loop myself. Maybe there’s some other reason it’s propaganda, I don’t know. It does certainly seem to be echoing the same victim complex that cinemas have been playing up since COVID, but I’m not sure “theater propaganda” is really a thing.
Netflix isnt trying to buy the part of the company that owns CNN. News is not a factor in any way.
Larry Ellison IS. That’s the alternative.
Its not an alternative. Ellison will sfill be able to buy CNN after the Netflix deal.
True, but at least that’s just CNN and not a chokehold on all media.
I have no interest in a 9 part mini-series titled “The Golden God - Inside Trump’s White House”.
I can’t imagine netflix having any commitment to news either
They don’t. Their bid is just for the Warner Bros. side of the company. CNN is part of the Global Networks side. Paramount is bidding on the whole thing. Either way, Paramount will likely get CNN.
Probably not, but given the choice (term used loosely) between “ignore it at best, get rid of it at worst” and “fire the journalists and replace them with state-funded sycophants”, the apathetic option suddenly seems more appealing. Obviously the preferred option is “stop letting the big companies eat all the smaller ones,” but I don’t see any formal crackdown on that any time soon, what with that slime mold and all.
