Why Martin Scorsese's the Irishman won't be coming to a cinema near you
If there was ever a sign that cinemagoing was becoming a niche experience, it must be that a major feature directed by one of the godfathers of modern film will grace only a handful of big screens around the world.
Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a crime drama starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, is not the first likely blockbuster to bypass wide theatrical release before heading to the binge-box of home entertainment, but it is perhaps the most notable – and it’s sparked a coordinated response from cinema operators internationally, who see the rise of the streaming giants as an existential threat.
The $159m film and passion project for Scorsese was financed by Netflix after years of languishing in development. The director wrote in the New
York Times earlier this week that Netflix “alone allowed us to make The Irishman the way we needed to”. But when it came time to broker a deal with distributors for theatrical release, parties couldn’t agree.
Traditionally, cinemas have demanded a 90-day window between theatrical release and on-demand availability, essentially giving them the first exclusive bite of the revenue pie. But negotiations between the Netflix/Scorsese
team and two major US cinema chains, AMC Theatres and Cineplex, fell apart earlier this year when Netflix reportedly wanted that window closed to 45 days at most.
Other major cinema chains in the UK and Europe followed suit. The Irishman is reported to have opened in only eight cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. The trend has also spread to Australia, where the only cinemas to be showing the film will be “independent” chains such as Dendy and Classic cinemas – companies that have a stronger market in niche fare than major multiplexes like Village and Hoyts.
The Irishman is not the only film to have broken the 90-day rule. Last year’s Oscar-winning Roma, for example, had a three-week run in cinemas before becoming available on Netflix. But whether due to the auteur’s prestige or whether cinemas have hit peak frustration at streaming services’ encroachment on traditional box office revenue, the bite-back from the industry has been sharp.
Last week, the president of the US cinema industry association, John Fithian, called the outcome of the negotiations in the US a “disgrace”.
“Netflix is facing a challenge to their business model for the first time and missed a strategic opportunity,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
“The point of an exclusive theatrical window is for movies to reach their full commercial potential. Netflix chose to artificially limit The Irishman’s theatrical release,” he said. “They sent a signal to filmmakers that even if you’re Martin Scorsese, you won’t get the wide theatrical release you want through Netflix.”
His Australian counterpart, David Seargeant, chairman of the National Association of Cinema Operators
(NACO), told Inside Film in October: “Several exhibitors, who are not our members, are taking a short-term view and showing films without an appropriate theatrical season.”
If it’s preferable for films funded by streaming companies to go straight to the home, why bother with theatrical release at all? Part of the answer is acclaim: eligibility for major accolades such as the Academy Awards is still tied to first release in cinema. There’s also an aesthetic consideration: films made for TV are structurally different to those made for the proportions of a cinema screen. And for the right films, extraordinary profits can still be made from those public showings – as Marvel, and its parent company Disney, have shown.
Scorsese’s recent comments about the lack of “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger” of those massive Marvel films – opinions he first expressed in October – were accompanied by a more general lamentation about the state of cinema today.
“Every new Hitchcock picture was an event. To be in a packed house in one of the old theatres watching Rear Window was an extraordinary experience: It was an event created by the chemistry between the audience and the picture itself, and it was electrifying,” Scorsese wrote, while simultaneously acknowledging that filmmakers like himself were hamstrung between wanting to make films for that collective, aesthetic experience of the theatre, while also being required to follow the funding.
It’s a justification some smaller cinema operators, many of whom aren’t members of the industry association NACO, have made for showingNetflix’s films, despite the bigger players showing a united front. Australian indie chain Dendy, for example, plans to release other Netflix films – including The King, Marriage Story and The Two Popes – ahead of their on-demand release, despite many of them breaking the 90-day window.
“Consumers want to see niche and alternative content on our cinema screens,” says Scott Mota from Dendy, explaining their decision to screen the films. But it’s a decision they might not always be able to make. Once the 90day window breaks and the precedent is set for shorter theatrical runs, cinemas fear their box office takings will suffer – and so will the chances of many more films making it to the big screen at all.