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Longtime listeners/readers will know that I’m not hugely fond of the Fast and Furious movies. But I really enjoyed Barry Hertz’s book on the series, Welcome to the Family, and think that you might as well. Even if you don’t care about the fast-cars-and-family movies, the series as a whole serves as something of a crash course in the economics of Hollywood over the last quarter century, and Hertz nails that evolution in this book.
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Whatever you think about James Cameron’s Avatar movies—and my feelings on them are mixed¹—you really must listen to his two-part interview with Matt Belloni over at Puck. (Here’s part one; here’s part two.) There is no one in the film industry with Cameron’s combination of artistic success, critical acclaim, popular appreciation, technological accomplishment, and his box office returns to give real heft to everything he says about showbiz.
Although the whole conversation is worth listening to, for this newsletter I want to highlight just his thoughts on Netflix’s potential purchase of Warner Bros. Cameron reacted strongly, calling out Netflix’s CEO by name.
“Netflix would be a disaster. Sorry Ted, but geez. Sarandos has gone on record saying theatrical films are dead,” Cameron said.
Cameron’s response is understandable: Alongside Christopher Nolan and a handful of other holdouts like Ryan Coogler, Quentin Tarantino, and Denis Villeneuve, he’s one of the few people in Hollywood truly committed to the big-screen experience. It is, quite literally, the only way his most recent run of films are really worth watching: You cannot replicate the 3D experience at home and even if you could it still wouldn’t be as good as watching movies in a real theater. And Netflix is, ultimately, committed to destroying the theatrical model—which increases its expenditures by driving up labor expenses and costs it eyeballs in the form of lost attention—despite reports that Warner Bros. will honor existing theatrical commitments if it purchases the studio.
“It’s sucker bait, right?” Cameron rhetorically asked, summarizing the Netflix strategy: “We’ll put the movie out for a week. We’ll put it out for ten days. We’ll qualify for Academy Awards consideration.” Cameron knows the truth and is willing to state it publicly: Netflix buying Warner Bros. means that theaters will lose a fifth or a sixth of their regular output, including huge blockbuster properties like DC and other franchises, which would, potentially, send exhibitors into a death spiral they could not recover from.
Now, there are obviously issues with the other bidders, primarily Paramount and its owner, David Ellison. (When we debated this on Across the Movie Aisle this week, Peter took Netflix’s side over Paramount’s for just this reason.) I am also wary of Ellison; I have seen what they’ve done with CBS and I abhor the fact that they seem to be in the driver’s seat of this sale simply because they have Trump-shaped ace up their sleeve and the promise of less interference from the FCC. (There’s also likely to be a reduction in theatrical output if Paramount absorbs WB, but I’m slightly less worried about that since the whole point of buying WB is to put out the movies that actually keep theaters afloat, like The Batman and its sequels.)