Steven Spielberg has criticized the way streaming services, including Warner Brothers' HBO Max, are treating filmmakers. The award-winning film director of The Fabelmans has blamed the services for taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic when theatrical releases were first cancelled. In an interview with The New York Times, Spielberg took aim at streaming services for refusing to give filmmakers theatrical releases after the height of the pandemic. “The pandemic created an opportunity for streaming platforms to raise their subscriptions to record-breaking levels and also throw some of my best filmmaker friends under the bus as their movies were unceremoniously not given theatrical releases,” Spielberg said.
“They were paid off and the films were suddenly relegated to, in this case, HBO Max… And then everything started to change.” Whilst Spielberg acknowledged that older audiences may have benefited from being able to view new movies in the comfort of their home, he believes they may have also appreciated the “magic of being in a social situation with a bunch of strangers” only theaters can provide. He went on to state that movie directors should be given the option to have theatrical release dates, whilst also using their initiative to demand such respect. “I think there has to be a concerted effort on the part of movie directors to demand that the streaming services footing the bill for most of these films give their movies a chance to be exhibited theatrically and not just in four theaters to qualify for awards,” he said, adding that it has to come from all of them, including “the WGA [the Writers Guild], the DGA [the Directors Guild] and the academy.”
Spielberg believes that theaters still have a place in society despite the growing popularity of streaming services. “We want theaters to stay open,” he said when explaining that executives, like himself at Amblin Partners, take time to decide which movie is better suited to a streaming service and which is better suited to a four- or six-week theatrical release window. “I found it encouraging that ‘Elvis’ broke $100 million at the domestic box office,” Spielberg said, in support of the viability of theatrical releases. “A lot of older people went to see that film, and that gave me hope that people were starting to come back to the movies as the pandemic becomes an endemic. I think movies are going to come back. I really do.”
Spielberg did go on to acknowledge that streaming services can be beneficial to certain movies, particularly for debuting directors, as long as they are not taken advantage of. He continued:
“When you’re first starting out, and a streaming service gives you a chance to direct your movie, of course, the streaming service is going to call the shot, but I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t like their movies to be shown on a big screen. I don’t know anyone that would say, no, I’d rather it be shown on an iPad or in a living room.”
He also used his own movie, The Post, as an example of how releasing films via streaming services can be beneficial in reaching a wider audience. “I made The Post as a political statement about our times by reflecting the Nixon administration, and we thought that was an important reflection for a lot of people to understand what was happening to our country,” he said, admitting that he did not know whether he “would have preferred to have made that film for Apple or Netflix and gone out to millions of people. Because the film had something to say to millions of people, and we were never going to get those millions of people into enough theaters to make that kind of difference.” He understands that times have changed, and may continue doing so.
Spielberg is not the only director to have criticized the release-date practice of streaming services. Earlier in October, Freaky director Christopher Landon hit out at streaming platforms for their day-and-date releases and their impact on box-office performance. “Studios: stop gambling with filmmakers and their movies to try and prop up your fledgling streaming services,” Landon wrote on his social media page, urging studios to stop the practice after his film, Freaky, as well as newly-released Halloween Ends received middling box-office earnings. He joined filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Tenet, Inception) in criticizing companies, particularly Warner Bros. over the practice.
Spielberg’s latest biopic movie, The Fabelmans, will be released in theaters on November 11, 2022, in selected theaters, and more broadly on November 23, 2022. Check out the official trailer below: