The Irishman: Netflix’s Bullet to the Head of The Movie Industry?

I saw Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman in the theater, and it was one of my most memorable recent cinematic experiences. The Irishman is epic in every sense of the word. It’s at once a decades-spanning exploration of organized crime’s interweaving with the American fabric’s most integral threads, a meditation on the cycle of life, and an introspectively meta reflection on the director’s own career as a teller of such stories. It is inspiring to think that the film will be enjoyed by tens of millions of people the world over. It is equally disheartening that the majority of them will experience it in much the same way they experience the latest Tik Tok video: alone, on a small, in many cases mobile, screen, quite possibly at accelerated speed.

Unless you live in a major city with an independently owned movie house, The Irishman probably will not be coming to a theater near you. It will, however, be coming to your phone on November 27th, the latest in a series of increasingly noteworthy films to essentially bypass theatrical release. The Irishman is produced by Netflix, so it’s no surprise that the world’s preeminent streaming service would center its release around their platform. It was a little harder to predict that when Netflix first began dropping those precious red envelopes into our mailboxes two decades ago, that they were leading us down the first step of a path that would fundamentally alter the way movies are consumed. There were warning signs, however, and they weren’t particularly subtle.

By the time Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the once dominant video rental chain had been limping along at an increasingly labored clip for nearly a decade. For all the romanticizing of the experience of combing the shelves for an old favorite or unknown gem, movie fans ultimately had no problem jettisoning the ritual for the convenience of receiving DVDs at their doorstep. That primed the pump for a world in which we could watch first run films from the comfort of our couch as well.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), at the same time Blockbuster was shuttering its doors, Netflix, powered by its new online streaming platform, was making the leap from content provider to content creator with the launch of its first original series, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The success of the shows broke the dam, and soon the stream became a flood, with Netflix and its burgeoning competitors churning out original series and movies with the ferocity of a monsoon.

Initially, the paradigm shift breathed new life into a movie business grown stagnant. Films that would not have found a home at a major studio, and thus struggle to attain theatrical distribution, secured financing and an audience more likely to give them a try. After all, if-you didn’t like Beasts With No Name, the first film distributed by Netflix, it’s not like you had paid anything outside of your monthly subscription fee. You could simply scroll back to your recommendations and select something more to your liking. The most buzz worthy of the streaming services’ originals secured theatrical runs, and even Oscar nominations, increasing the clout of the companies as content creators, and the amount of money they were willing to sink into original productions.

Suddenly Netflix wasn’t just a sanctuary for avant-garde art house indulgences; A-list actors and directors were being lured with lucrative deals. With the increased investment, Netflix grew progressively stingy with the theaters. Will Smith, once the king of the summer “tentpole” movie lent his still-significant star power to the 2017 Netflix exclusive, Bright, and recently signed on for another film with the streaming Goliath. Adam Sandler has cranked out five Netflix originals, none of which has landed on a single theatrical screen. There were mitigating factors, of course. Non-franchise action films like Bright are an increasingly hard sell in Hollywood, and if we’re being honest, Sandler’s sensibility (and face) have always been better suited to the small screen. But the capstone movie of Scorsese’s legendary career bypassing theaters feels like a different animal, and a sign of a fundamental shift in not only how we consume movies, but what movies are.

Theater chains typically demand a 72 day “window of exclusivity” for first run movies before they can begin streaming. Netflix’s refusal to provide that window for The Irishman is responsible for the film failing to hit your local multiplex. As theater attendance continues to dwindle, theater owners will only become less likely to agree to non-exclusive engagements that place them in direct competition with streaming services. A night at the movies for a family of four in a major city can easily run $100 with popcorn and drinks. Even viewers partial to the big screen experience could hardly be blamed for firing up their already-paid-for streaming service on their 80 inch flat screen, grabbing a box of Orville Redenbacher and a 2-liter Mountain Due at Walmart, and enjoying family movie night at home for a tenth of the price.

What we’re likely to see in the coming decade is the fragmentation of the movie industry into two distinct silos. Theaters will double down on their alliances with the legacy studios, who will in turn further skew their output toward mass appeal franchises like Star Wars and the The Avengers, that can be counted on to put butts in seats with outsized spectacle and rabid fanbases for whom communal viewing is part of the experience. Niche and genre fare will live increasingly on streaming platforms, with the cream of the crop likely getting limited run engagements at independent theaters and boutique “art house” chains, as happened with The Irishman and last year’s Oscar winner, Roma.

Such a paradigm shift will truly represent a double edged sword. With the proliferation of streaming services, there have never been more opportunities for filmmakers to create content, and find distribution that can potentially place it in front of an audience of millions. At the same time, that content has never held less value due to the sheer volume of it. Between movies, television seasons, limited series, stand-up comedy specials, podcasts, albums, mixtapes, and whatever that thing Kanye does on Sundays is, simply keeping current enough with the latest releases to be conversant in the cultural zeitgeist is a full-time job. Generating enough disposable income to subscribe to all the services one would need to legally access said content requires another full-time job. 

As a result, content consumption has become a mad rush to “get through it,” rather than an opportunity to truly savor creativity and artistry. So, Netflix's recent announcement that it would begin piloting a feature that allows users to watch its offerings at 1.5 speed was probably inevitable. By increasing the speed at which videos play by 50%, suddenly you’ll be able to finish a 45 minute episode of Stranger Things during a 30 minute lunch break, and move down your cue to burn through the 2 hour and 13 minute The Ballad of Buster Scruggs during the train ride home. Sure, the hustle and bustle of a rush hour subway ride might distract from the thematic subtext of the film, and your phone’s 5 inch screen will inevitably minimize the sweeping cinematography. But you will have made your way through a movie and a TV episode before you even get home, freeing your evening up to watch Eddie Murphy’s Dolomite is My Name in time to get your take onto Twitter while the topic is still trending.

It’s indisputable that the digital content boom has us watching more than ever before. But watching doesn’t necessarily mean processing. I’ve probably seen Scorsese’s Goodfellas a half dozen times, in all manner of milieus and stages of life. With each viewing, the film hits a little bit differently. I notice details, both thematic and visual, that had eluded me prior. The Irishman probably layers the subtext even more densely, due to both sheer scale and the additional three decades of life experience Scorsese and company bring to the project. Unfortunately, inherent in the digital distribution model is disposability. We race to watch it, distill it down to a 240 character hot take, and then move on to the next trending release.

I can’t help but wonder if Scorsese, a film purist if ever there was one, would even have made The Irishman as a feature-length film had he known that Netflix would fail to secure extensive theatrical distribution. In today’s landscape, the nearly 4 hour film may well have been better suited to the small screen as a limited run series. Ironically, such prestige offerings often receive closer viewing by audiences and critics alike, since the format invites reaction and analysis to multiple individual episodes rather than a self-contained one-off.

The episodic format may very well come to dominate the streaming market. While Netflix’s original brand was built around movies, it's telling that their streaming service currently offers over 700 original series and just 112 original films. There is a certain logic to it. Viewers are conditioned to watching TV series on the small screen, and the episodic format provides built in breaks for audiences with steadily decreasing attention spans and bladders bursting with wine, which Millennials are currently drinking at record amounts. 

Plus, for a streaming services looking to keep viewers logged on for as long as possible, episodic series are actually far more conducive to the much heralded binge session. The movie Fargo can be watched, credits-to-credits, in an hour and thirty-eight minutes; an hour and two minutes at 1.5 speed (though if you commit such cinematic heresy, we can no longer be friends). Completing a season of the Fargo, the TV series, would keep you logged into Hulu for upwards of nine hours. Should you feel inclined to chase that sugar high, there are two more tantalizing seasons right at your fingertips. You don’t really need to sleep tonight, do you?

Is the traditional movie experience that those of us born in the 20th Century grew up on destined for extinction outside of the Marvel universe? Not necessarily. But saving it will require some concessions from theater owners, and not of the salted and buttered variety. They’ll have to let the 72-day window of exclusivity go the way of silent films. Streaming services simply aren’t going to cannibalize their own viewership on an original property by giving their subscribers two and a half months to catch it at the mall.

However, a series of quick-hitting short run engagements for smaller niche films could be beneficial to all parties. Such a structure would create a sense of urgency for cinephiles determined to catch the latest Scorsese or Soderbergh in its full 35 mm splendor, maximizing attendance to the benefit of theater owns. Those tastemakers, if inspired, tend to become evangelists, generating social media buzz around the films they like, and helping them “cut through” in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.

In addition, theater chains need to devise a way to make their own nascent subscription services, like AMC’s Stubs and Regal’s Unlimited, catch on. Such offerings essentially make the theater experience like Netflix: users pay a monthly fee for near unlimited movies at a particular chain. Widespread use of such plans would change the math on a night at the movies from, “should I really spend $15 now when it will be streaming in 2 months,” to “I’m already paying $20 per month, might as well get my money’s worth.” Curiously enough, despite the widespread acceptance of the subscription model for streaming services, viewers have been slow to embrace it for theatrical releases.

One of the main themes of The Irishman is time’s passage and the accompanying shift of hierarchies. Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa struggles to accept a diminished role in the labor union that he built, and as a result finds himself on the outside looking in of the world he used to rule. Hoffa’s storyline should be instructive to theater chains. They were instrumental in building the movie business into the magical marvel of popular culture that we enjoy today, and most fans would agree that they can and should continue to play in role as the art form advances into the digital age. But, if they continue to insist on dictating how the pie is sliced, they may well find themselves cut out all together, and scrambling for crumbs.

About the Author

Jeffrey Harvey is a Washington, DC based writer and content strategist with experience in broadcasting, strategic communications, public relations, marketing and media analysis. He has written prolifically on subjects including technology, healthcare and arts and entertainment. His original one act play, Coffee won a staged reading at the Kennedy Center in the Source Theater Festival.