Willem Dafoe blames streaming for the decline of “challenging” movies
Actor Willem Dafoe has hit out at the current state of the film industry, claiming streaming platforms have caused audiences to opt against watching “challenging” movies.
Dafoe, who recently lent his voice to the English version of Studio Ghibli‘s animated fantasy The Boy and the Heron, has seen Hollywood dramatically change throughout his career. While it’s a naturally evolving business, Dafoe believes the recent development has been damaging and threatens the future of cinemas as more people opt to watch films at home.
In a new interview with The Guardian, the Platoon star commented on the death of movie theatres due to current trends, which he labelled “tragic”. Dafoe also observed how “the kind of attention that people give at home isn’t the same.”
The actor added: “More difficult movies, more challenging movies can not do as well, when you don’t have an audience that’s really paying attention. That’s a big thing.”
He continued: “I miss the social thing of where movies fit in the world. You go see a movie, you go out to dinner, you talk about it later, and that spreads out. People now go home, they say, ‘Hey, honey, let’s watch something stupid tonight,’ and they flip through and they watch five minutes of 10 movies, and they say, forget it, let’s go to bed. Where’s that discourse found?”
Due to the change in viewing habits, Dafoe is convinced studios are altering the type of films they commission in order to please the algorithm.
The actor said: “They aren’t making movies the same way they used to. They’re being financed by toy companies and other entities, and they become the vehicle to make the movies, because they know how to do that. Streaming, they’re becoming like a monopoly, they have the means of production and distribution. And so it’s very complicated.”
Dafoe’s comments follow remarks made by Martin Scorsese last year, who claimed “the industry is over” as he once knew it.
According to the director, studios are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”
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