Netflix original films are getting a lot of appreciation. Some movies like Dee Rees’ Mudbound and Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th have even received Academy Award nominations. Not to forget, Bryan Fogel’s Icarus received the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for 2018. But, there’s someone who thinks that Netflix original films and theatrical features do not deserve award recognition as other major films.
During a recent interview with ITV News, while promoting the new film Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg said that he doesn’t think that films from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon should qualify for the Academy Awards.
“Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie,” the legendary director said. “You certainly, if it’s a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar… I don’t believe films that are just given token qualifications in a couple of theaters for less than a week should qualify for the Academy Award nomination.”
Spielberg spoke about the problems that streaming services pose to the conventional movie business. He also talked about how the movie industry dealt with the emergence of television in the 50s to the domination of streaming platforms today.
“Hollywood is used to that, we are accustomed to being highly competitive with television,” Spielberg said. “The difference today is that a lot of studios would rather just make branded, tentpole, guaranteed box office hits from their inventory of branded, successful movies than take chances on smaller films. And those smaller films that studios used to make routinely are now going to Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix.”
Spielberg said that he would still prefer to make movies like The Post for movie theaters rather than make it for Netflix.
“Few and few filmmakers are going to struggle to raise money or to go to compete in Sundance and possibly get one of the specialty labels to release their film theatrically, publicly, and more of them are going to let the SVOD business finance their films — maybe with the promise of a slight one-week theatrical window to qualify them for awards,” the director added.
You can check out the interview video clip below. Spielberg’s upcoming film Ready Player One will hit theatres on March 29, 2018.
Do you think Steven Spielberg is correct? Let us know your views in comments below.
Source: ITV News
