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Netflix Banned From Competing At Cannes Film Festival Due To Lack of Theatrical Releases (theverge.com)
Netflix has been banned from competing in the Cannes Film Festival, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter. "Theirry Fremaux, the head of Cannes, told THR last week the ban is because Netflix refuses to release its films in theaters, choosing instead to debut them on its streaming service and, in some rare cases, do day-and-date releases so the film can be seen both online and off," reports The Verge. From the report: In the case of Bong Joon-ho's Okja and Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories -- films that were entered into last year's Cannes to widespread protest from French filmmakers -- Netflix was unable to secure last-minute permits for one-week theatrical releases due to French media regulations. "Last year, when we selected these two films, I thought I could convince Netflix to release them in cinemas. I was presumptuous, they refused," Fremaux told THR. "The Netflix people loved the red carpet and would like to be present with other films. But they understand that the intransigence of their own model is now the opposite of ours." Starting with this year's Cannes, which takes place in May, films screened in competition will need to have a French theatrical release. Netflix is still allowed to show films at Cannes, Fremaux added, but its films will not be eligible for the prestigious Palme d'Or.
If I were Netflix I would use the very large amount of money it has, to go in with Amazon to make a second Cannes that accepts the world as it is (maybe call it "Jarres"), and let Cannes as it is now fade into irrelevancy. Do you think stars would be more, or less likely to go to something sponsored by Netflix and Amazon?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd say that most movie houses aren't actually theaters either.
From Wikipedia
Theatre or theater[1] is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage.
And My Home Viewing Setup is better than any movie house from 50 years ago (Except maybe the Real Buttered Popcorn)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's like professional sports in the Olympics.
The best players in the world don't complete in the Olympic games because their professional careers don't give them the opportunity.
So the gold medal winners aren't really top of their sport, they're top of the group who doesn't have a high paying professional contract.
TFA is terrible at explaining this, but the reason Netflix can't enter Cannes is because their movies haven't been in French cinemas, and the reason their movies haven't been in French cinemas is because it's illegal to to show movies inside and outside cinemas at the same time: http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris...
Wonder what the public key field is for?
We were all dying to know that you don't care about this article. And what better place to announce it than a message board specifically for discussing said article? Would you mind telling us about some of the other things you don't care about?
Thank you for the Interesting, Insigtful, and not-at-all Redundant post indicating your indifference.
Cannes seems to fail to recognise the irony here. Organisations like Cannes will die off because of the intransigence of the film industry and their own dated model.
Sometimes, Cannes picks genuinely good movies. Often, they just pick pretentious crap like Melancholia. On balance, an award at Cannes is more likely to be a negative than a positive.
If the industry didn't make such an event out of this stuff, then no one would!
The other thing is, it also shows how resistant to change the industry is. Just like they couldn't embrace the digital frontier and have had problems with piracy, even now, with streaming, which is a way to get people to pay for this stuff (i.e. not pirate) and they still don't want them in their little club. Not that I really care, but watching from the sidelines makes me think that in doing this, they're displaying a stubbornness and willingness to go down with the ship, if it comes to that.
this article is pure ignorance. it's not the france is banning netflix for not showing films in theaters. It's that cannes has always exclded films not released in france.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories were OK, but they're not going to compete with any of the Cannes finalists. Netflix will just keep trying and Cannes will eventually realize that requiring a theatrical release is an artifact of a bygone era.
Personally, I think some of the mini-series on Netflix are more worthy of Cannes than those two movies, but again, Cannes doesn't understand that the world has moved on.
You are welcome on my lawn.
since they no longer use film, and it's a film festival.
It's called the Las Vegas Film Festival.
Cannes just kissed their small sliver of relevancy goodbye.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It competed at Indy in 1968 and lapped the entire field before crapping out right at the end with a minor mechanical problem. But because all the pricey Offenhausers driving the other Indy cars immediately became obsolete, the official response was to ban turbines at Indy in future years. That was the moment when the US yielded world domination of automotive technology to Asia.
Cannes used to be one of the great festivals for indy films. This decision makes it the Indy of the film world.
it's not the france is banning netflix for not showing films in theaters. It's that cannes has always exclded films not released in france.
But, Netflix cannot release in theater even if they wanted, because some weird old protectionist law make it impossible to both release online and in theater at the same time.
(The law was designed in such a way so that back in the days, movie theaters would have a window of opportunity to try to profit from a movie, before the movie got unleashed on VHS tapes. Of course it was probably presented as some crap like "movie theater should be noble place used to display art, not to serve as vile commercial to advertise VHS sold in shops").
Similar restriction also (used to) exist regarding the timing of TV releases(*) in France (again to guarantee a "right to profit" to those who released before).
And modern EU-wide laws (that also exist in France) prevents Netflix from geo-locking (They cannot block streaming of some movie to French IP addresses for the sake of France's movie theater release priorities).
So yeah, it *is* France's law that a preventing Netflix to compete in Canne due to some indirect interactions that blocks Netflix from doing what they are required to do in order to compete.
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(*) : Which wasn't very efficient at its intended "profit-securing" purpose, because these law couldn't obviously apply to nearby countries such as Switzerland and Belgium where french is also one of the spoken language and where the movie would be released sooner on over-the-air TV that could be received in France. Much to the dismay of VHS shops in France and/or TV channel in france who would have wanted to profit from advertisement sold during movie airing.
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