Join DC Shorts in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Washington for our inaugural DC Shorts Zoom Film Salon Series, a new bi-monthly online gathering. The Film Salon will bring together members of the filmmaking and film-loving communities for discussions on current topics with great moderators and wonderfully informed guest speakers. The goal is to expand the knowledge and perceptions of the audience members and participants alike during an enlightening, timely, and perhaps entertaining evening.
July Topic: “Will Movie Theaters Survive” the COVID-19 pandemic? With Special Guest Panelist Ann Hornaday, Film Critic for The Washington Post.
The July Film Salon will be moderated by Pamela Nash, filmmaker and DC Shorts board member, and Raleigh Joyner, cultural programming coordinator at the Goethe-Institut, Washington, D.C.
This Zoom event is free and open to the public, but you must register. Upon registering, you’ll receive the Zoom link and passcode via email.
RSVP
Trolls World Tour, an animated family comedy from DreamWorks, did not set out to create seismic waves in the movie industry. But it did. How?
On-demand streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more, have continued to reshape our perception of media accessibility. Until recently, we have seen many of these changes most notably impact television and serials. Original programs like
Stranger Things (Netflix),
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu), and
The Man in the High Castle (Amazon) have been able to hold their own alongside pay-cable programming on HBO and Showtime, basic cable programming on AMC, and prime time network television.
But what about the role of streaming platforms in film? That is, bypassing the theatrical release process altogether, circumventing the movie theater, and releasing a major film production straight to a streaming platform? What about a world premiere of a major film on a streaming platform?
In the past, movie-viewers often associated direct-to-video releases with lower quality and lower budget. If it didn’t have some kind of cinema release, was it worth seeing? Direct-to-video releases were not eligible for major awards like the Academy Awards or the Golden Globes. Even television films – including acclaimed HBO original movies, such as
Behind the Candelabra (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2013) and
Bessie (dir. Dee Rees, 2015) – were not eligible for Oscars at all, and were only considered for awards in certain categories at the Golden Globes. The connection between a movie having a theatrical release, or not having one, and its perceived quality, remained inextricable.
That is changing, however. In November 2019, Martin Scorsese’s
The Irishman had a limited theatrical release before becoming available on Netflix less than a month later. Despite knowing that they could wait just a few more weeks to see the movie on Netflix, moviegoers emerged in droves to see the 209-minute movie in cinemas anyway (again and again), and it was a smash at the box office.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to leave most movie theaters shuttered around the world, and many studios pushing back their films’ premiere dates to ensure theatrical releases. Universal Pictures, however, decided to release
Trolls World Tour directly to streaming on demand in North America. To date, it has made roughly $110 million in digital rental and streaming fees, making it the most successful “day-one” rental Universal Pictures has ever had.
This phenomenon has launched a passionate conversation regarding the future of movie theaters in the film industry. The Academy Awards and Golden Globes are reconsidering their restrictions on non-theatrical film releases, more and more films are premiering online and seeing positive results, and some are even questioning whether these revelations are leaving cinemas endangered.
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