This quote by Frank Marshall was added to the Indiewire report:
"Some of those titles were never in contention for competition, including the Welles film — the filmmaker’s last, uncompleted work — which was a natural fit for the Cannes Classics section. “Even though we are not in competition, we are collateral damage if they decide not to go,” said producer Frank Marshall, who’s overseeing the Welles restoration. “It was a mutual decision not to go to Cannes because we support Netflix. There would be no movie without them. Every studio and financier in town passed on this film, for years.”
If Netflix actually goes through with their threats and don't submit Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and Paul Greengrass‘s Norway for Cannes, I can assure you people will not be happy. The Cannes lineup will be announced this Thursday, 4.12, but what we're being told is that Netflix will boycott.
As this controversy has developed I've been siding more and more with Netflix over the matter. Take for example as per French Cultural Minister laws, if Netflix were to send its movies to Cannes competition, they wouldn't be able to stream them until 2021! Yikes. Do you blame Netflix for this?
Author/screenwriter Joseph McBride is part of the pro-Netflix camp. He even plays a film critic, Charles Pister, in the Orson Welles film. He posted the following on Facebook:
“There’s been a big flap over how villainous Netflix supposedly is threatening to withdraw its films from Cannes, including Orson Welles’s nearly completed The Other Side of the Wind and Morgan Neville’s companion documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (both of which I am in).
“Netflix stepped up to the plate after Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Roger Corman and everyone else in Hollywood passed up the opportunity to finish The Other Side of the Wind. For that alone Netflix [deserves] the eternal gratitude of film history. They are heroes in this saga. As I wrote, it was my idea to bypass theatrical after two decades of futility, so people can blame me for that, but if not for Netfix the film would still be in cans in the Paris lab. Kudos to the producers for making this finally happen and to Netflix for supporting it so generously.
I will say this: if it weren’t for Netflix, this film would not even be restored and released. It’d still be on pause, with Welles’ widow Oja Kodar continuously sidestepping the artists involved and secretely shopping for better deals. They stepped up when the studios balked. I will forever be grateful for this. Kodar is happy, the creatives are happy, cinephiles are happy.