James Cameron has never been one to mince words, and as a result he has occasionally courted controversy. Remember, this is the same man who, according to his ex-wife, Sarah Conner actress Linda Hamilton, used to say to her, “Anybody can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do, and I’m going for that.”
Well, last week proved no different as Cameron, on The Ringer podcast The Town with Matt Belloni, harshly criticized Netflix’s strategy for landing Oscar nominations for their productions, even indirectly singling out the company’s CEO and recent guest star of The Studio, Ted Sarandos. Cameron lays out their strategy as such: “We’ll put the movie out for a week, we’ll put it out for 10 days; we’ll qualify for Academy Awards consideration. See, I think that’s fundamentally rotten at the core.”
Here, Cameron indeed has a point. Streamers like Netflix, by their very nature, need to draw customers to their service, and theatrically releasing every one of their productions would fly in the face of their business model. However, Cameron rightfully points to the cynical nature of Netflix’s limited theatrical releases, which seeks the bare minimum release window so that they can qualify for the Academy Awards, and we’re seeing this right now with Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man, which was theatrically released on November 26th, but it will then shift to exclusively streaming on Netflix on December 12th.
Theatrical cinema has admittedly been waning in recent years, particularly since the pandemic, and Cameron would like to see streaming services who theatrically release select movies to do their part and help promote the industry by extending their theatrical runs beyond the bare minimum for that chance at Oscar glory, such as Roma, which won Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Cinematography at the 2019 Academy Awards. Steven Spielberg subsequently criticized Roma’s wins, arguing that movies from streamers constitute “TV movies”, and as such they should instead qualify for Emmy Awards. It’s important to note, though, that Cameron, conversely, is not against the eligibility of streamer productions, but rather the criteria that makes them eligible in the first place.
In the same podcast interview, Cameron outlines the requirements he would like to see implemented, stating, “They should be allowed to compete if they put the movie out for a meaningful release in 2000 theaters for a month,” reasoning that “The Academy Awards, to me, mean nothing if they don’t mean theatrical.” It’s here, then, where I disagree with Cameron’s overall sentiment, even though I do understand where he is coming from.
The Academy Awards have been an annual staple since the first ceremony in 1929, and while the Oscar has since become the most coveted award statue in theatrical cinema, its creator, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer co-founder Louis B. Mayer, could not have foreseen the rise of streaming 80 years later and how fundamentally it would alter the landscape of commercial filmmaking. Fascinatingly, in yet another cynical twist, Mayer originally created the Academy Awards as a means of union-busting.
Yet I digress, as the point here is that streamers, while they have certainly contributed to a palpable sense of quantity over quality in today’s cinematic environment, they are also capable of producing theatrical quality cinema deserving of major recognition, and a relatively arbitrary number of theatres across the US should be an indicator, not an outright dictator. I’m not against set rules and regulations, which are undeniably essential, but I also don’t think that they should be so restrictive as to rule out deserving nominees, such as the aforementioned Roma.
I respect Cameron’s position, and of course he and the likes of Steven Spielberg – who are amongst the greatest and most significant commercial filmmakers ever – would be protective of theatrical cinema, which certainly needs to be monitored and preserved. However, over the past 15 years or so the lines between the TV movie and feature film have been blurred, and as such their views fail to acknowledge the inescapable shift in the industry brought on by streaming services, the pandemic, and of course the world economy. Going to the theatre has become a relatively pricey proposition in an age where inflation and affordability are issues for the average filmgoer, who can pay $18 to see one movie, or, for a similar price, they can watch a whole selection of movies and TV shows for an entire month, right from their couch.
Nonetheless, streaming services such as Netflix also need to do their part in truly promoting theatrical cinema if they are to enter that domain, instead of simply chasing awards.