The only streaming service Christopher Nolan doesn’t hate with a passion: “It’s terrific”
There are far too many streaming services these days, and while many households need to pick and choose which ones they want to subscribe to, they could always do what Christopher Nolan does and avoid every single one of them like the plague.
Obviously, being an incredibly rich, successful, and well-connected filmmaker who also happens to be the president of the Directors Guild of America makes it a lot less likely that the two-time Academy Award winner will struggle to track down a copy of a film that he wants to see without streaming, but at least he’s a man of principle.
Warner Bros shot itself in the foot when it announced that every one of its 2021 releases would debut in theatres and on HBO Max simultaneously, a decision that caused Nolan to sever his two-decade association with the studio, and having made Oppenheimer and The Odyssey under the same roof, it’s looking as though he’s a Universal guy now.
Does that mean he’s a Peacock subscriber? Probably not, since nobody really knows anyone who is, but you can bet your house on the filmmaker never shelling out a monthly fee to Netflix, with the company becoming his number one source of ire and frustration for the ongoing bastardisation of cinema.
Those two streamers, plus Paramount+, Disney+, Apple TV, MGM+, and all the rest, have effectively brought the television model full circle. If you want to have access to everything at your fingertips, it’ll cost you a small fortune to make it happen, which is pretty much cable TV all over again.
Some of the industry’s most prestigious auteurs have worked for these companies, but you wouldn’t catch Nolan helming anything that wasn’t designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible. That’s why he’s always been so against the concept, but he was willing to make an exception for one platform.
“Netflix has a bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films,” he explained. “They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable model for theatrical presentation. So they’re not even getting in the game, and I think they’re missing a huge opportunity.” However, Prime Video gets a pass.
“You can see that Amazon is very clearly happy to not make that same mistake,” Nolan added. “The theatres have a 90-day window. It’s a perfectly usable model. It’s terrific.” He’s got a point, since Amazon Studios, and latterly Amazon MGM Studios, have continued to prioritise the theatrical experience.
It hasn’t been a runaway success, since every Project Hail Mary, Manchester by the Sea, American Fiction, The Handmaiden, or You Were Never Really Here, there’s a Red One, The Accountant 2, or The Beekeeper to balance the scales, but you can’t fault the boardroom for not doing a Netflix and ditching cinemas completely.
