Oscar winner Steven Spielberg is facing backlash after urging the Academy to ban Netflix from being considered for the awards show.
The legendary director, 72, is said to be going the Academy's board of directors to voice his concerns. A spokesman for Spielberg told Indiewire: 'Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation.
He’ll be happy if the others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the Academy Board of Governors meeting]. He will see what happens.' Netflix had big wins at the awards last Sunday after picking up 15 nominations with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma winning three gongs. And Spielberg's views have not gone down well online with both viewers and filmmakers. Ava DuVernay earned her first Oscar nomination in 2017 for her Netflix documentary 13th.
She wrote: 'This is a Board of Governors meeting. And regular branch members can’t be there. But I hope if this is true, that you’ll have filmmakers in the room or read statements from directors like me who feel differently.' On Twitter journalist Jamil Smith wrote: 'Steven Spielberg got his start directing television.
It is remarkably obtuse of him to compare Oscar-nominated fare like ROMA, MUDBOUND, 13TH, and BEASTS OF NO NATION to so-called “TV movies.” What an insult to those films and filmmakers.' Others joked it was like the granddad from The Simpsons 'yelling at a cloud' while one person questioned the use of screeners to vote for the Oscars.
Writer Alanna Bennett tweeted: 'My question is why is Spielberg ~taking on~ Netflix as opposed to....literally anything else???? This is your big Hollywood fight in 2019 sir?!' Film writer Scott Weinberg added: 'Ugh. When your heroes become the crybabies. Spielberg's debut was a network TV movie that was later released in theaters. Hypocrisy is an ugly look.'
In March last year Spielberg, who has won best director and best picture, told ITV: 'Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie. If it’s a good show, you deserve an Emmy. But not an Oscar.
'A lot of studios would rather just make branded, tent-pole, guaranteed box office hits from their inventory of branded successful movies than take chances on smaller films. 'Those smaller films that studios used to make routinely are now going to Amazon and Netflix.
'Television is really thriving with quality and heart but it's posed as a clear, present danger to film-goers. 'I'm just saying that fewer and fewer filmmakers are going to struggle to raise money or to compete at Sundance or possibly get one of the specialty labels to release their films theatrically, publicly.
'More of them are going to let the SVOD [Streaming or Subscription Video on demand] businesses finance their films, maybe with the promise of a slight one-week theatrical window to qualify them for awards as a movie.'
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