The Academy’s Unintended Antitrust Dilemma.
Yesterday it was reported that the United States Department of Justice has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that they would be unwise to exclude movies submitted from Netflix for Academy Award consideration.
They claim it would be a breach of Antitrust laws that would see major corporations colluding to devalue the product of a rival company. A strange yet compelling reason to keep the streaming giants in with the big leagues.
This is all in response to a push from Steven Spielberg to have the streaming company excluded from future award campaigns due to the nature of most of their content not playing in a theatre before home-viewing.
Spielberg’s concern is a philosophical one — He believes a streaming movie is a made for TV movie. He is of the belief that a film streamed before a cinema release is very welcome to be eligible for an Emmy, just not an Oscar.
So before the legislative lawyers begin their proceedings, a simple definition of what exactly a ‘movie’ is in 21st-century viewing habits needs to be established.
1. A movie is a distributed form of content available on any device upon release as dictated by the rights holders. This would be Netflix’s definition.
2. A movie that is distributed in theatres before a window allows it to be made available for home viewing. Spielberg’s suggested definition.
3. A narrative structure captured on camera with a run-time of over 50 minutes (based on the French definition of a ‘feature film’.) Released or not released, the threshold has been crossed and a film has been created. This would be my definition.
Take definition number 3, which mirrors number 1 in a similar way except that distribution plays no part in whether or not a film has been created. The bar for access is its actual creation and therefore, distribution is irrelevant as long as the correct parties are engaged in the content. This leaves the window open for platform distribution on Facebook, Twitter, IGTV, YouTube — wherever an active and engaged audience exists.
This obviously goes against Spielberg’s and the Academy’s definition, yet expressly engages the spirit of the US antitrust laws.
As a result, it would also exclude itself from Academy consideration — but as more films are made, more will be looking for alternate methods of distribution and more audiences will demand that their favourite new releases be recognised by the institutions that celebrate such work.
This is a scenario that won’t present itself in the short run, but it will present itself.
Tastes and viewing habits change, Hollywood does take a while to catch up.
But since it is aware of the market, this will definitely demand it to catch up.
