VOD has changed the way we watch movies. So what now?

It’s now eas­i­er than ever to access the films you want to watch when you want to watch them. But while the VOD rev­o­lu­tion has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the way we con­sume cin­e­ma, few could have pre­dict­ed that the likes of Noah Baum­bach, Bong Joon-ho and Mar­tin Scors­ese would one day be mak­ing work exclu­sive­ly for online stream­ing platforms.

Back in 2015, when Net­flix announced its first orig­i­nal movie – a sequel to Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on imag­i­na­tive­ly titled Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on: Sword of Des­tiny – the move was greet­ed with arched eye­brows and plen­ty of scep­ti­cism, as up to that point the com­pa­ny had poured most of its resources into pop­u­lar Orig­i­nals series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. But Net­flix were opti­mistic, with chief con­tent offi­cer Ted Saran­dos telling the New York Times, ​“What I am hop­ing is that it will be a proof point that the sky doesn’t fall. These are two dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, like going to a foot­ball game and watch­ing a foot­ball game on TV.”

Although Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation gar­nered praise from those who actu­al­ly saw it, Netflix’s ini­tial attempts at orig­i­nal film­mak­ing were not looked upon favourably. Qual­i­ty con­trol quick­ly became an issue, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of the Adam San­dler Agree­ment which saw the come­di­an sign a lucra­tive six-pic­ture deal, result­ing in The Ridicu­lous Six, The Do-Over and Sandy Wexler. Ridicule duly fol­lowed, and for the first time Net­flix appeared to recog­nise the need to take a dif­fer­ent tack with their film output.

Last year marked a new era for Net­flix Orig­i­nals. With the recruit­ment of Noah Baum­bach, Bong Joon-ho and Angeli­na Jolie, a smat­ter­ing of exem­plary film­mak­ing arrived in the form of The Meyerowitz Sto­ries, Okja, and First They Killed My Father. At the same time Net­flix released a woe­ful­ly mis­judged adap­ta­tion of Death Note, as well as numer­ous small­er, equal­ly for­get­table projects. There have been far more miss­es than hits from the Net­flix pro­duc­tion line since it rum­bled into life in 2015, and the shelf-life for films seems to be short­en­ing as more and more projects vie for space.

With Net­flix con­tin­u­ing to lure high-pro­file film­mak­ers by offer­ing them greater cre­ative free­dom than they might oth­er­wise be grant­ed, and rather than exist­ing as sep­a­rate enti­ties, as Saran­dos sug­gests, the gap between tra­di­tion­al stu­dios and VOD appears to be nar­row­ing. At the time of writ­ing Dun­can Jones, Alex Gar­land and Ava DuVer­nay all have projects in the pipeline for the stream­ing giant, while Scorsese’s long-await­ed Pesci/​De Niro reunion The Irish­man is pen­cilled in for a 2019 release. More will sure­ly follow.

This all sounds great in the­o­ry. Stu­dio inter­ven­tion has been cit­ed fre­quent­ly as a source of frus­tra­tion for direc­tors (cf Alan Smithee), and in giv­ing film­mak­ers the free­dom to make the projects that they’re pas­sion­ate about, VOD stu­dios take chances where tra­di­tion­al stu­dios are afraid to. Their back­ing ensures that these projects get made, for bet­ter or for worse. The Irish­man is a per­fect exam­ple – Net­flix picked up the project after it was dropped by Para­mount in 2016, whose finan­cial back­ers had pulled out over the film’s esca­lat­ing bud­get (which cur­rent­ly stands at $125 million).

VOD com­pa­nies have swift­ly estab­lished them­selves as viable alter­na­tives to the tra­di­tion­al big film stu­dios, but there is still the issue of dis­tri­b­u­tion. Ama­zon (who are yet to pro­duce their own fea­tures but run a sol­id dis­tri­b­u­tion arm) have secured the rights to some of 2018’s biggest releas­es, includ­ing new films from Luca Guadagni­no and Gus Van Sant. Along with Net­flix and Cur­zon, they have tried to have it both ways, secur­ing fes­ti­val pre­mieres (Okja caused a stir at Cannes in 2017) and giv­ing cer­tain titles a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal release in order to build hype and extend a film’s longevity.

But this strat­e­gy is incon­sis­tent. Many the­atres were unable to show Dee Rees’ superla­tive Mud­bound due to Net­flix hav­ing an agree­ment with Cur­zon, lim­it­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who were able to expe­ri­ence the film on the big screen. Sim­i­lar­ly, Garland’s upcom­ing sci-fi epic, Anni­hi­la­tion, which was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for a the­atri­cal release in the UK, will now hit Net­flix exclu­sive­ly at the begin­ning of March after a lim­it­ed US run. For a visu­al­ly-dri­ven film, rel­e­ga­tion to small-screen devices seems par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate, and there is a ten­den­cy for such films to quick­ly fade into the dig­i­tal ether.

Film dis­tri­b­u­tion is a dou­ble-edged sword. It can be dif­fi­cult to access inde­pen­dent and lim­it­ed release films if you don’t live close to a cin­e­ma show­ing any­thing oth­er than block­busters, or if you can’t afford to pay climb­ing cin­e­ma tick­et prices. Such trips, and the pur­chase of DVDs, are increas­ing­ly a lux­u­ry, and although many would argue VOD is the next best thing to an actu­al cin­e­ma screen­ing, for many view­ers, it’s the only thing. VOD plat­forms offer view­ers an afford­able one-stop shop – but the shop doesn’t real­ly exist, and this is at odds with the fact that, at its core, film is a phys­i­cal medium.

From going to the cin­e­ma or buy­ing a DVD, the tick­et or disc you hold in your hand is a token of months of devel­op­ment and invest­ment. The phys­i­cal­i­ty of a film is com­pro­mised when a new release becomes rel­e­gat­ed to a thumb­nail image on a carousel, con­sumed in an end­less binge-watch­ing cycle. Films that feel inher­ent­ly cin­e­mat­ic (espe­cial­ly those shot on phys­i­cal film stock) sim­ply don’t have the intend­ed impact when viewed on a lap­top or tele­vi­sion. We live in an age where algo­rithms ensure that con­tent is served to us accord­ing to what is deemed to be most rel­e­vant to our inter­ests – VOD plat­forms are designed to lim­it the oppor­tu­ni­ty for dis­cov­ery. Rec­om­men­da­tions based on view­ing habits and sim­i­lar inter­ests keep us tied to a plat­form, doing lit­tle to encour­age us to step out of our com­fort zone.

With VOD plat­forms increas­ing­ly look­ing to replen­ish their cat­a­logues with orig­i­nal con­tent in a bid to entice new users (and retain exist­ing ones), there’s a sense that many films can and will get lost along the way. Dis­ney are even opt­ing to cre­ate their own stream­ing ser­vice, enabling them to retain the dis­tri­b­u­tion rights to their prop­er­ties while gain­ing a share of the VOD mar­ket. It seems like­ly that oth­er stu­dios will fol­low suit, essen­tial­ly cre­at­ing online libraries and remov­ing the need for ​‘own­ing’ a film at all. As films become the sole prop­er­ty of the stu­dios who pro­duce them, they con­trol who sees them more strong­ly than ever.

The ques­tion now is not how best to view films, but how to ensure the best new releas­es reach the audi­ence they deserve. VOD has rev­o­lu­tionised the way we watch movies, but online releas­es are rarely greet­ed with the same fan­fare as tra­di­tion­al the­atri­cal releas­es. They rely on social media to spread the word, almost expect­ing their users to do con­tent mar­ket­ing for them. Yet this doesn’t always yield high returns. In the near future the keys to the stream­ing king­dom will sure­ly belong to whichev­er plat­form man­ages to change the mar­ket­ing game. As things stand, that still feels a long way off.