The Weinstein Company
Having arguably conquered television—or, at least, made a sizable dent in it, thanks to original shows like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black—it was only a matter of time before Netflix turned its attentions to movies. Turns out, that time will be August 2015.
The New York Times reports that the company will debut Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend on its streaming service simultaneously with the movie’s release in Imax theaters across the US next summer. It’s a move content chief Ted Sarandos hopes will prove to studios that “the sky doesn’t fall” if Netflix has earlier access to content.
“These are two different experiences,” Sarandos said when comparing watching a movie in theaters with streaming one through Netflix. “[It's] like going to a football game and watching a football game on TV.”
That might not be enough of a difference for some theater owners, of course. Within hours of the news of the plan breaking, Regal—the largest theater chain in the US, which owns 86 Imax locations—and Cinemark (which owns 14 Imax screens) both said they would not be playing the movie in their theaters next August, with a Regal statement on the issue declaring that the chain “will not participate in an experiment where you can see the same product on screens varying from three stories tall to three inches wide on a smartphone.” Canadian chain Cineplex has also said that it would not be playing the movie on its Imax screens. (AMC, the second largest theater chain in North America, has yet to comment.)
The second Crouching Tiger movie will be co-produced by Netflix and the Weinstein Company, with Harvey Weinstein saying in a statement that Netflix was “unquestionably at the forefront” of the evolution of the movie-going experience. “We are tremendously excited to be continuing our great relationship with Netflix,” the Weinstein co-chair continued, referring to the two companies’ earlier partnership on the upcoming Marco Polo television series.
The good news is that this deal represents another step in the slow, slow march towards simultaneous digital and theater release for movies. (And, seriously, didn’t The Girlfriend Experience, Snowpiercer , and similar projects already prove such things aren’t going to destroy movies as we know them?) The bad news, however, is that the reluctance on behalf of movie theater owners to sign on for the revolution suggests that we’re still some way away from being able to choose between the multiplex or the couch when it comes to the next big movie thing. Sit tight.
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