At this year's Venice film festival, several films produced by Netflix will be released at cinemas and on Netflix simultaneously following the festival. After the Cannes Festival demanded that all films needed a local theatrical release to compete at this year's festival, Netflix pulled all films from the festival, and the big winner of this was - the Venice Film Festival.
Six Netflix films will debut at the Venice Fest with festival chief, Alberto Barbera saying, "My job is that of a programmer, not a distributor. I see no reason to exclude from the competition of the festival a film because it was produced by Netflix. In France, the law is different as regards to the windows, but fortunately here we do not have these problems." And he is right! As I said in a prior post regarding the Cannes decision to ban Netflix films - it was stupid and out-of-touch with what is transpiring in the film industry and that Cannes would be the loser - it already has.
As you would think, some of Italy's cinema exhibs are against the decision by the Venice Festival. Reasoning that the decision hurts them however they are not looking at the bigger picture. Piracy is rampant in Italy so running day-and-date completely destroys the piracy play. Also, the running of Netflix films allows the exhibs to exhibit excellent product at better terms than available from mainstream studios, and consumers will want to experience the films on large format screens with major sound. All of this favors the local cinema operator and they should embrace it.
The Venice Film Festival begins on Wednesday, August 29th, and end on Saturday, September 8th. Wish I could attend this year's fest as it will be historic for movie exhibition.
Just saying,
Jim Lavorato
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