A right royal victory
Australian win in a global war
NETFLIX is fighting a global war but here in Australia, it has secured a key victory.
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts announced it has accepted David Michod’s forthcoming movie, The King, in competition for the local industry’s most prestigious film award.
The decision is significant because it’s the first movie AACTA has accepted that will not have a theatrical release in Australian cinemas.
The King will only be released on Netflix’s streaming platform on November 1. In the US, The King will have a short theatrical run in part to qualify for awards such as the Oscars.
The King is directed by Michod, best known for Animal Kingdom, and co-written by Michod and Joel Edgerton, with the two also serving as producers with Liz Watts.
The film, based on Shakespeare’s Henry plays, stars Edgerton and Ben Mendelsohn alongside an international cast including Timothee Chalamet in the title role, Robert Pattinson, Sean Harris, Thomasin McKenzie and Lily-Rose Depp.
Netflix has been engaged in a global war of sorts against cinema exhibitors who say their business model is being challenged by the likes of streaming platforms which are keeping people home.
At the heart of the disagreement is that Netflix won’t abide by a traditional “theatrical window”, which means any movie that is shown in a cinema can’t be released on a home entertainment platform for several months.
In the US, that period is three months, whereas in France it’s a mandated 17month wait before a cinematic release can be added to a streaming service. It was previously a three-year window before it was reduced in late 2018.
Netflix was famously banned from competition at the Cannes Film Festival at the behest of French exhibitors after two of its 2017 films, Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories, screened in competition for the Palme d’Or.
Netflix movies Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Steven Soderberg’s The Laundromat, Eddie Murphy vehicle Dolemite is My Name and The Two Popes were forced into smaller venues at last week’s Toronto International Film Festival after Canadian cinema chains refused to screen the films.
Festival hub Scotiabank Theatre, owned by one of Canada’s largest cinema chains, also refused to screen any films released by Amazon.
Netflix has a swath of award contenders directed by highprofile filmmakers in the offing in the next few months, including Marriage Story, The Laundromat and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman that will reunite the director with Robert De Niro for the first time in more than two decades.
While those movies will have a limited theatrical run in the US, they will only play in independent and art house theatres with all major American cinema chains refusing to play ball.
There are no plans to release any of them on a big screen in Australia.
So for the AACTA Awards to declare The King eligible for competition is welcome news for Netflix, and it marks the Australian industry body as more progressive than many of its international counterparts.
“It’s an incredibly interesting year for the Australian film industry, with an increasing amount of cinema quality films opting for digital distribution models,” AACTA | AFI chief executive Damian Trewhella said in a statement.
Nominees for the AACTA Awards will be announced in late October.