When Morgan Freeman tried to change cinema and nobody cared: “I want to have control”
As an art form that exists in a constant state of evolution, cinema is always on the search for its next great game-changer. Whether it’s the talkies, the short-lived 3D boom, blockbusters, the onset of digital film, or streaming, the next craze is constantly lurking around the corner. Morgan Freeman was ahead of the curve in one respect, but the downside was that nobody cared.
Unlike many of his peers, though, nobody really regards the distinguished veteran as a multimedia mogul. Whereas countless thespians have diversified their portfolios and moved into writing, directing, producing, and investing in various companies, Freeman has always been a more low-key kind of personality.
That’s not to say he’s strictly an actor, having founded Revelations Entertainment in 1996 alongside his producing partner Lori McCreary. Then again, the Academy Award winner has only been listed as an executive producer on seven films in which he also starred in addition to two that he didn’t, which hardly makes him prolific in that regard.
Still, Freeman had enough business acumen to predict where the industry was heading, but because it happened at a time when Netflix was still sending out DVDs to customers and studios were driven almost entirely by box office, it barely raised an eyebrow within Hollywood.
There won’t be many folks willing to go out on a limb and call director Brad Silberling’s little-seen 2006 dramedy 10 Items or Less the best entry in Freeman’s filmography, never mind one of Tinseltown’s most quietly transformative pictures. And yet, that’s exactly what it was.
The movie was made available for digital download two weeks after it hit cinemas, making it the first picture to be released online while it was still playing on the big screen. Of course, that’s commonplace these days, but it was virtually unheard of in the mid-2000s.
“I’m just a firm believer that things continue to grow, get better,” he explained, per Mercury News. “Where I live, in my town, there’s no movie house. There are many, many, many, many people who don’t have access. I want to have control over making films. I really do, and we came up with the idea of distributing movies via the internet on a stable platform, on something that you can control.”
These days, high-profile features with recognisable stars are released nowhere but digital platforms, never mind the movies that are rolled out simultaneously in theatres and on-demand or the shortened theatrical windows that have seen countless films made available for audiences to watch in the comfort of their own homes weeks, and occasionally days, after they’ve premiered on the silver screen.
Freeman did it in 2006, but nobody paid any attention despite history proving that he was years ahead of the curve. 10 Items or Less may not be a flick that lingers long in the memory, but it quietly blazed a trail that virtually every major outfit in Hollywood eventually started following.
