# spielberg argues streaming services are not cinema **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 3, 2019, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spielberg-argues-streaming-services-are-not-cinema/830470 "2019-03-03T05:17:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spielberg-argues-streaming-services-are-not-cinema/830470/81 "2019-03-06T22:41:04Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > This is the case. It’s about a fair playing field. If Spielberg makes a movie and no one watches it, the movie is a disaster and he’s in serious trouble. He is required by the nature of theater releases to make something that is commercially viable. Streaming studios don’t have to do that. Their goal is not to actually get someone to watch a film, but rather to make them think that their subscription to the service is valuable and worth continuing. A film like Roma is impossible to make for a studio who wants to release it commercially. It’s a Spanish language film made in black and white that is a drama period piece. It could be the greatest movie ever made and no one is going to the theater to see it. Spielberg has probably had dozens of similar ideas and knows that largely they just aren’t doable. So what is worrying him is that we will see a rise of a new type of movie which is essentially ‘big-budget art house’ that will make it impossible for ‘normal’ movies to compete in the Oscars. I mean, Spielberg can make a low-budget arty movie and distribute it very cheaply just like anyone else can. The idea that he has to spend a lot of money and release it to a bunch of theaters is an artificial constraint that he has apparently imposed on himself. Cuarón’s last movie before _Roma_ had a $100+ million budget, so what’s Spielberg’s excuse? If the Academy wants to honor cinematic art, it should probably ignore irrelevant things like the economics of film distribution. If it wants to simply be a mouthpiece for monied interests in the film industry (I think it obviously wants to be some of both), then by all means they can make this change. But they should not be surprised when it hastens their descent into cultural irrelevance. A few people have tried to draw a distinction between things that are “made for the big screen” vs “made for the small screen”, but I can’t think of any actual feature of movies to hang that on. Theater and streaming movie production both use the same cinematic filming equipment, and the product is released in the same resolution. The viewing experience I can build in my house with a budget of about $1000 is significantly better than the one at most of the theaters I went to for decades. Black out curtains simply aren’t that expensive, and TVs are _amazing_ these days. Hell, if you want to see a movie in an immersive environment, putting some headphones on and your phone in one of those head-mounted racks that blocks out the rest of the world can be done for even less. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spielberg-argues-streaming-services-are-not-cinema/830470/82 "2019-03-07T00:48:17Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > Spielberg is great, but he’s not always right. I remember when Spielberg (and Lucas) were [holding out refusing to release their stuff on DVD](https://ew.com/article/1998/05/01/spielberg-says-no-dvd/). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spielberg-argues-streaming-services-are-not-cinema/830470.md?page=4)