Whether you’re a streaming service like Netflix or the biggest film studio in Hollywood, there’s no denying that the state of the industry is changing due to technology. Streaming provides many more chances for filmmakers to get their art shown around the world, at the sacrifice of screen size. No matter if you feel that’s a good thing or a bad thing, the truth is that the times are changing and for filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, he thinks that is probably for the best.
And he has a warning for the film industry – change or die.
Speaking at the CPH: DOX festival (via ScreenDaily), the filmmaker discussed the current state of the industry and what he sees coming in the future. And if you know anything about Refn, you know that the filmmaker is not someone that candy coats his thoughts.
“We have to destroy the past by wiping the slate clean and saying that, ‘yes cinema is dead, but filmmaking is very much alive’. It’s alive at year zero, it’s like the third Lumiere brother saying, ‘we’ve just invented steaming,’” said Refn.
Now, “wiping the slate clean” and “cinema is dead” and “destroy the past” are terms that would probably make Steven Spielberg’s spidey-sense tingle. Those are some major proclamations that are sure to get Film Twitter, and the old guard of filmmakers, to debate their merit for days. But Refn does explain his thoughts in more detail.
“As an industry, we’re trying to take our past into our future, and we’re constantly failing both financially and artistically,” the director said. “It doesn’t mean that going to the cinema isn’t beautiful or wonderful or something we all like to do, including myself, but the reality is in the future the audience will consume content on their telephones. Instead of fighting that or trying to villainize that, we have to embrace it and say that the telephone coexists with the cinema screen. Neither is better or worse, it’s just coexistence. If you can’t make content that’s as good on a smartphone as in a cinema, you won’t survive.”
“The cinema world needs to adapt to the future, [filmmakers] don’t need to adapt to the old system. The cinema industry has to embrace the cellphone. Through that, we’ll get a much more harmonic idea of what the future will be like. If they don’t, it will continue to demise. Right now the only thing keeping cinema alive is American superhero blockbusters,” he continued.
The “Drive” filmmaker kept talking about the current state of the industry. However, he put on his Nostradamus hat for a minute to discuss his predictions for the future. And to no one’s surprise, the future involves streaming and consuming content how audiences want, which may not line up with the filmmaker’s intentions.
“I have a theory that very soon people won’t be watching anything in its entirety, not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have to,” he said.
However, all the doom and gloom surrounding Refn’s view of the film industry and streaming isn’t without one bit of good news – documentaries are thriving. And the filmmaker says that you can only thank Netflix for that growth in popularity.
“If you’re into documentaries you should thank Netflix every single day,” he said. “They’re the company that bought the market back to documentaries, it’s a huge business now, including theatrically. You have docs grossing $10-12m in the US and they’re not even that great. Netflix has introduced documentaries as ‘entertainment’ to a mainstream audience and have been enormously successful in doing so.”
Refn’s first foray into streaming content comes in June, when his crime series “Too Old to Die Young” hits Amazon Prime Video.
