Slate’s senior editor Sam Adams reflects on the Streaming Future that we find ourselves living in, bereft of the steady flow of big-ticket theatrical releases, and he is not impressed. The process of studios distributing movies to theatres acts as a kind of “filter”, presenting a slate of films that are worthy of a cinephile’s attention.
Imperfect and biased through this filter can be, “on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t, and their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match.” It’s not that there aren’t great movies being released in 2020, it’s just that fewer people have heard of them. For studios, a movie that succeeds at the box office returns more overall than a movie that skips theatres. Even Netflix sees this logic, booking runs for its best new films in theatres, including Roma in 2018, The Irishman in 2019 and Mank and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom this year.