What Happened To The Movie Star?
RIP
We’re in the middle of my favorite season right now: Festival Season.
A bellwether for future awards and a chance for movies to gain momentum, promotion and distributors, these film festivals are crucial when it comes to showing new projects and building word-of-mouth.
There are the big ones (sometimes known as the Big Five) in Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance but there are plenty of others such as the New York Film Festival, which I bought tickets for just the other day. It starts at the end of September and goes through mid-October, and it rules. In a Ticketmaster-esque mad rush, I was able to get seats for three movies: Priscilla, The Taste of Things and The Zone of Interest. It’s one of my favorite parts of living in New York and a holiday of sorts for yours truly. With that said, I am bummed that I wasn’t able to snag a spot for Poor Things and Hit Man.
Poor Things is the new Emma Stone-starring Yorgos Lanthimos Frankenstein-inspired comedy. You’ve probably seen the trailer, but if you haven’t, here you go.
It looks fucking bizarre. I can’t wait.
Hit Man, on the other hand, has been perhaps the big surprise hit of the season, and it’s based on a true story of an undercover Houston police officer posing as a reliable hitman. It stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona and is supposedly a crowd-pleasing phenomenon chockful of star power and pure entertainment.
Hit Man is a movie that’s meant to be seen on the big screen with an adoring crowd oohing and ahhing at the twists and turns. What more could one want?
Well, that’s not happening.
We have some good news and bad news. The good news is that Hit Man was purchased for $20 million. The bad news is that Netflix bought it.
Now, I don’t blame Netflix for making a monumental bid. They have the money and it makes sense to get this on your service. People love true crime. Glen Powell’s on a hot streak after Top Gun: Maverick. And if you have the cash, why not?
The problem is that this is yet another film that will ultimately disappear on Netflix’s service behind Suits, Suits and more Suits. There will be a theatrical component, but the chance of this starting small, garnering interest and building into a genuine hit is gone. It’ll be on your TV before it has any semblance of a chance.
Hit Man’s director, Richard Linklater, has been giving plenty of interviews on the movie business, but the following quote from an AP piece really stood out to me.
There’s something less tangible about being on Netflix, or any other streaming service for that matter. These films don’t have a chance to expand and the star power is diminished when you’re watching on your laptop as opposed to in IMAX.
This was a strong chance for Powell to become a household name—especially since he has a rom-com with Sydney Sweeney supposedly dropping this year—but that’s all gone with this news.
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Now, that is a budding movie star! Potential cheating, drama and people being hot? That’s big news.
Think of the movie stars we do have. They’re few and far between, and all the ones we do have are in their twilight years. Director Quentin Tarantino has said as much stating that “You have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters. But they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star. I mean, I’m not the first person to say that. I think that’s been said a zillion times… but it’s like, you know, it’s these franchise characters that become a star.”
Franchise entertainment has turned characters into the stars instead of the actors. Chris Evans? Pretty good actor (sometimes). Certainly not a star. Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson all lost a decade-plus of their careers working in front of green screens instead of growing as actors and honest-to-god movie stars.
The stars we do have we have for a reason: Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep are known by their characters, sure, but they’re also recognizable for their acting chops and big-screen charisma. We don’t have people opening movies like that anymore. It’s a bummer.
I don’t really have more than a take than that. It’s tough to be optimistic about the movie industry when the best chances for box-office hits get relegated to streaming services, only to be lost immediately. Did you know that the director of the critically-acclaimed Spencer has a new movie out? Or that it’s somehow about the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet but if he was a 250-year-old vampire seeking death? This is insane shit, and it was dropped and immediately lost on Netflix.
Over the next few months, Netflix will be releasing BIG movies to less fanfare than they deserve. Maestro from Bradley Cooper. Pain Hustlers starring Chris Evans and Emily Blunt. The Killer from David Fincher. May December from Todd Haynes. Rustin, Fair Play, Nyad, Leave the World Behind, American Symphony. These are all movies that would have been discussed and dissected a decade ago and may now become invisible due to an algorithm. Even Apple has Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. Both have relatively wide theatrical distribution, but it’s certainly not what it once was.
We should have more movie stars. It’s good for business. It’s good for gossip. It’s good for personal newsletters discussing movies. We need to fix this, or I may have to start writing about television.
*shudders*