“To me, it’s greed”: How MGM betrayed Viggo Mortensen in 2022
Filmmakers’ and actors’ love of cinema, and their disdain for streaming, has become so self-referential that in Sentimental Value, there’s a moment where director Gustav Borg, played by Stellan Skarsgård, is horrified to learn his film might not receive a theatrical release because of Netflix.
This sentiment has been growing in the film industry over the past few years, with the focus on streaming not only harming cinemas but also the very movies the studios or streaming sites are distributing. Never one to stay quiet about these things, Viggo Mortensen had more than a few words for the studio that messed with the theatrical releases of one of his films.
“Well, I feel the same as an actor and as a director,” he told Vanity Fair, “I feel like I’m part of a filmmaking team and I always want a movie to be seen in the theatre, especially if I think it’s a good movie”. He then went on to explain his experience with Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives.
“That was a movie that MGM made, and when they did their test screenings for that movie, they got the highest scores in the history of that studio,” he said, detailing the huge theatrical roll out that was planned by the studio, “Then Amazon bought MGM…”
Despite the original test screenings and an agreement to go along with the plans for theatrical release, Amazon decided to renege on their deal, pulling the film from most cinemas and pushing the streaming release. “Basically, you saw that movie for a week in Chicago, New York and LA, London, and that was that,” the actor said, “Then you had the streaming, which I thought was really sad”.
Howard’s Thirteen Lives was a film based on the Tham Luang cave rescue, with Mortensen appearing alongside Colin Farrell as the brave divers who managed to save the junior football team trapped in the caves. Released in 2022, it was the first big-budget film Mortensen had committed to in a long time. And it’s safe to say, it probably put him off the whole thing.
With the theatrical releases cut, what should have been an awards contender flew completely under the radar, and the fact that the move was made to simply make the streaming giant, Amazon, more money, well, that was just a kick in the face, “How much money do you need?… To me, it’s greed,” Mortensen declared bluntly.
Of course, studios have always come across as greedy, as they are more interested in numbers than anything else. However, the streaming services replacing the big studios are doing far more to harm films than the original studios have done. Not only are they marginalising the voices of the filmmakers, but they’re marginalising film in general.
It’s no longer about big swanky releases and lengthy run times in theatres; it’s about simply getting more people to subscribe and hopefully forget to cancel. It doesn’t even really matter to them if the movie gets watched.
