Steven Spielberg has made some pretty decent movies over the years. Jaws? Quite good. Jurassic Park? Good clean fun. E.T.? Why, we wouldn’t have Stranger Things without it.
But the most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history is clearly not the forward thinker he once was.
Specifically, he’s lobbying the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences not to let movies released on streaming get any more Oscars.
Because he thinks streaming is TV.
“Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie,” he told a British TV station in 2018.
“You certainly, if it’s a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar. I don’t believe films that are just given token qualifications in a couple of theatres for less than a week should qualify for the Academy Award nomination.”
In a year where the Netflix-distributed movie Roma was nominated for ten Oscars and won three, it’s hard not to see this as shade aimed directly at Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed movie.
Spielberg – who backed eventual (and controversial) Best Picture winner Green Book in this year’s Oscars race – is the Governor of the Directors’ branch of the Academy. He’s taking a proposal to an upcoming meeting to change the rules around how films distributed by streaming platforms qualify for the Oscars.
Under the (complicated) current rules, a film can qualify with as little as a week-long theatre run in New York and LA with reviews in major papers, but an exclusive theatrical run isn’t required.
And with Netflix devoting more resources to Originals, including high-profile talent working on original movies, and other streaming services like Amazon wanting in on the boom, this will only be a bigger problem for the Academy in future.
to see legendary filmmakers denounce a platform that creates amazing and diverse content gives a voice to creators that would otherwise not have an outlet is so disheartening to see, I truly wonder why so many are opposed to alternative methods of viewing content ?
— ً (@fatimasweird) March 1, 2019
Netflix is releasing a crime film by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese next year. It will star Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel, and it’s called The Irishman but might as well be called I’m Marty Fkn Scorsese, Wanna Fight About It?
Other Real Actual Movies coming to the platform include the Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile (AKA Zac Efron As Hot Bundy), which premiered at Sundance, and Guillermo Del Toro’s stop-motion Pinocchio adaptation.
Spielberg’s insistence that these are “TV movies” is snobbishness on the same level as ageing rock dudes who insist that vinyl is the only correct way to listen to music.
As others have pointed out, Netflix is a bit less old-fashioned than Hollywood studios, and formats outside the traditional studios can give a platform to voices that don’t have old-fashioned kinds of access – just like it’s easier for a young person making pop songs in their bedroom to just drop it online than it is for them to get a record deal.
I also think we can all agree that it is more difficult for films by and about women, people of color, and myriad other communities to access the resources necessary to secure an exclusive four week theatrical window.
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) March 2, 2019
The Academy is then faced with a choice between 1. finding another way to support the theatrical experience and 2. further excluding communities that have been historically excluded from its ranks, which has catastrophic consequences downwind in the industry.
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) March 2, 2019
Any rules the Academy changes in order to tighten entry for streaming companies might affect other, more niche “traditional” films and documentaries. Not to mention that smaller films and indies sometimes spend just a week or three in cinemas – is that “token”, or only when Netflix does it?
Roma has been playing in Australian cinemas since December 7, and has been available to Netflix subscribers the entire time, by the way.
Cuaron won an Oscar for its cinematography.
And yet Spielberg is implying it’s not a “real” movie.