Jeremy Saulnier's new film was supposed to premiere at Cannes, but French laws about theatrical releases being streamed only three years after release prevented that from happening. Those same laws also prevented Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma,' and Orson Welles' "The Other Side of the Wind" from going to the Croisette. The debate will live on until a compromise is surely reached between fest and streaming giant.
Saulnier, whose films I've championed, especially his masterwork 2014 debut “Blue Ruin,” and his sophomore effort, the viscerally brilliant "Green Room," was recently asked by IndieWire about the Netflix/Cannes debacle, and, suffice to say, he didn't hold back on his words, saying it was a “shame.” He continued, “I respect Netflix for carving new paths that bypass traditional methods of distribution to directly connect with a humungous audience. But both entities are evolving, and I think eventually they’ll work out their differences.”
As for people like director Steven Spielberg who believe that Netflix movies should be considered “TV movies,” well, Saulnier has a message for them:
“With new distribution platforms and release strategies on the rise, I hear a lot of volleying back and forth in the trades as to what constitutes a movie,” Saulnier said. “I’ll happily stay out of that debate as long as I can keep telling narrative stories with other people’s money. Oscar versus Emmy? Not concerned.”
“But if anyone tries to tell me any of my modest movies aren’t actually movies they can kindly go stab themselves in the face several times and set themselves on fire,” concluded the filmmaker.
Of course, we are not doubting that Saulnier's latest is a real movie, but a question that I keep asking myself, and that begs to be asked more often, is this: Will Netflix movies stand the test of time in the same way theatrical movies would? Take for example last year's two Netflix movies that appeared at Cannes: Bong Joon-Ho's "Okja" and Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories." A decade from now, when they still won't be available on physical media, and you won't be able to catch them on TV, and they will just be buried in Netflix' neverending catalog of tens of thousands of movies, will they be remembered? There are merits for filmmakers to do theatrical instead of streaming, but I do understand that the American studio system is right now in a dire state for originally told stories, so both sides have their merits.
“Hold the Dark” should be released on Netflix this fall.