Hollywood giant Steven Spielberg is in the news again today with the
announcement that his Amblin Partners entertainment company has signed the
paperwork on a deal with Netflix. According to the terms of the agreement,
Amblin Partners is set to produce multiple movies for Netflix each year,
though for how long remains unknown. As the largest name in filmmaking now
attached to Netflix, this development could herald the final step in
changing the traditional big-screen industry, repeating a trajectory
established in 2020.
An Industry Reshaped
Ever since the first commercial movie aired in 1895 at
the Grand Café
in Paris, the big screen has been the de facto home of the biggest
releases. While there were many reasons for this, the fundamental
arguments that it should stay this way revolved around traditionalism and
economic reality. While tradition for tradition’s sake doesn’t require
much of an argument, being more of a subjective matter, from an economic
standpoint, such a system of releases made sense.
As one of the most popular forms of entertainment, there’s a lot of money
riding on big releases performing well at the theatre. Though it could be
possible for these releases to do well if initially released over home
media, there are risks associated with this avenue. These primarily relate
to the ease of piracy, where it’s been thought that the dangers of copying
tapes and DVDs could reduce a film's profitability.
Of course, these ideas depended on an outmoded movie environment. With
the arrival and popularisation of systems like Netflix and Disney+, this
long-established ecosystem began to change. Following significant
investment into their internal productions, these companies began to
release movies with vastly superior quality than what audiences had grown
to expect from direct to home releases. Movies like
Bird Box
and Extraction set records for performance, and in 2020, more established
production companies took note.
During 2020, streamed movies began to reach outside of cinema-only
releases, with some being available simultaneously on streaming and
in-theatre. As it turns out, the fears of piracy were massively
overstated, with these movies reaching profound social and financial
success. Today, it seems that message has reached the top, where Steven
Spielberg has decided to dip his toes into the water.
A Predictable Path
While movies are the latest to make this jump into a home-delivery
sphere, it’s worth noting that they are far from the only industry to make
the switch. As others like online casinos have shown for decades, the path
here is too great to ignore. A strong example of an established name in
this sphere is
Bingo casino, where Buzz Bingo and other games have seen significant success when
accessible online. Whether through slots like Rhino Blitz and Flaming
bars, or any other game type, the gambling industry expanded rapidly with
the advantages the internet brings, and now movies finally want a
taste.
Though there’s no date or titles yet announced by Spielberg or Amblin
Partners, a safe bet would put their first release on Netflix sometime in
2022. For those of us who prefer at-home movies to the theatre experience,
we can't wait. For everyone else, there are still the traditional forms of
access, and those don't seem to be going anywhere.