When you’re one of the most successful movie directors in the world, you’re entitled to have loud and proud opinions.
Christopher Nolan is the director (and sometimes writer) behind the likes of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk, Interstellar, Memento, The Prestige and more besides, and is arguably the most in-demand director working today.
So when he has something to say about movies, people tend to pay attention.
Around the time he was promoting Dunkirk this summer, Nolan announced that he would never, ever work with Netflix, telling Indiewire the following:
“They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable model for theatrical presentation. So they’re not even getting in the game, and I think they’re missing a huge opportunity.”
He seems to have cooled off a bit since then, telling Variety that he sent Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos an apology letter:
“I should have been more polite. I said what I believe, but I was undiplomatic in the way I expressed it. I wasn’t giving any context to the frankly revolutionary nature of what Netflix has done. It’s extraordinary. They need appropriate respect for that, which I have.”
However, he didn’t stay in apology mode for too long, as within the next minute he was comparing Netflix Original movies to bottom-shelf Steven Seagal releases…
“My entire adult life they have released straight-to-video films. As a filmmaker, when I was starting out in the ’90s, your nightmare was the straight-to-video release. There’s nothing new about it—what’s different and new about it is selling it to Wall Street as innovation or disruption.”
Regardless, we really enjoy that Chris seems to be channelling his inner Rick.
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