Woody Allen expects his 50th film to be his last: ‘The thrill is gone’
Popula actor and film Director Woody Allen says making movies ‘is not as enjoyable to me as it was’ — and his 50th film, which he’ll helm this fall, will likely be his last.
There was zero mention of any of the controversy surrounding the director in his interview with Alec Baldwin on Tuesday. And while actors Allen has worked with in the past have distanced themselves from him amid his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow’s resurfaced sexualabuse allegations, he didn’t touch on that at all when talking about how ‘the thrill is gone’ from movie-making.
Allen said that films having a short life in theaters before moving to streaming are ‘one of the things that discourages’ him from making new films — and then COVID hit and solidified that feeling.
‘When the pandemic came, I was in the house, like everybody else — petrified, hiding under the bed and I didn’t go out for months’ Allen said. ‘I couldn’t make a movie that I planned to make. After a few months went by, I started to think: ‘Gee, I like it under the bed. I don’t have to go out. I don’t have to make a film. I don’t have to be ... up at 5 o’clock in the morning and making decisions all day long’.
He said he spent his days exercising, playing the clarinet and writing — his new book, Zero Gravity — and at 86 he’s decided he “likes staying home.”
‘I’ll probably make at least one more movie, but a lot of the thrill is gone’ he said. ‘When I started, you’d do a film and it would go into movie houses all across the country. ... Now you do a movie and you get a couple weeks in a movie house — maybe six weeks, four weeks, whatever — and then it goes right to streaming or pay-perview.
And people love staying home with their big screens and watching on their television sets and they have good sound and a clear picture.’