Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” is a front-runner in this year’s awards season. It’s also a Netflix film, which brings some added baggage to the discussion. And as the lines blur between cinema and TV, and the industry is concerned about the future of the theatrical experience, Campion and Guillermo del Toro sat down to talk about streaming and its place in filmmaking.
The discussion between Jane Campion and Guillermo del Toro is part of Variety’s Directors on Directors, which allowed the two filmmakers to talk about their new films (“The Power of the Dog” and “Nightmare Alley,” respectively) as well as the biggest issue facing the industry today—the ubiquity of streaming.
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For Campion, she freely admits that she watches quite a bit of content on her iPad and only makes it out to theaters for “special” filmmakers.
“As a user of them, I’m like a whore. I’m a greedy little thing,” said Campion. ‘I’ll look at something on my iPad. But I don’t watch movies on my phone.”
She added, “That’s the limit. If it’s a special filmmaker, I’ll go to a movie theater.”
For del Toro, he admits that he wants the theatrical experience to survive, but he also understands that streaming allows for creative freedom that the typical studio system won’t allow.
“The theatrical experience, which is beautiful and moving, I hope it’ll never go away,” said del Toro. “It will wane and rise. And at the same time, I must say, in my personal story, many of my projects I would’ve never been able to shoot I’ve been able to have financed because of [streaming services].”
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He continued, “I can have a crazy idea, like saying, ‘I want to do ‘Pinocchio’ during the rise of Mussolini, in stop-motion.’”
The project he’s referencing is his upcoming “Pinocchio” stop-motion film which is being released by Netflix and features a pretty stellar cast. Campion also understands how Netflix played a vital role in getting “The Power of the Dog” made, and she admits that the film wouldn’t have ever seen the light of day if the streaming service didn’t step up to take the risk to finance the feature.
All told, it’s clear these two filmmakers adore the theatrical experience but, as both have experience with streaming services, they’re well aware of the current state of affairs in the film industry. Film fans can probably agree that you can’t hate everything about Netflix if we can continue to get features such as “The Power of the Dog.”
