How the Streaming Age Already Set the "Precedent"

Yes, we’re still talking about the precedent that apparently has now been set with AT&T and WarnerMedia green lighting Zack Snyder’s Justice League for HBO Max.

You’ve likely seen enough written, spoken and shown about it. Everything from critics vilifying the “identity politics” of the Snyder Cut movement, to grown men with untrimmed beards literally screaming claims of tyranny into a microphone while twisting their faces into exasperated whining for the camera. If you haven’t seen it, consider yourself lucky because it’s even more pathetic than I just described.

I’ve already written how ridiculous it is for anyone to assert that a fanbase could bully and intimidate a multi-billion dollar studio system into an investment, but now let’s take a look at the other side of this “bad precedent” argument and really pokes some holes into its validity.

If we are to assess the core argument behind the bad precedent mindset, it’s the idea that fan campaigns can get studios to reverse course on their theatrical releases in favor of alternate cuts that are more creator driven on a streaming service. This suggests a slippery slope because once you do it for Zack Snyder, a flood of others will come out of the woodwork and completely change Hollywood as we know it for the worse.

The thing is……that’s pretty much already happened, and it started well before Release The Snyder Cut was even a hashtag.

It has been well documented for decades that the traditional market structure in Hollywood is nothing if not problematic, on several levels. We’re not just talking about generations of studio meddling and executive interference, but also budget constraints, marketing missteps, creator suppression as a whole and a host of diversity issues to boot. Getting a movie made in Hollywood in the traditional sense can be nothing short of a minor miracle from a first world perspective. There are so many hoops to jump through, so many dances to give, so much red tape and bureaucracy to push past, and if you find a way to make it through all of that, THEN you get to have your film drawn and quartered by the studio three ways from Sunday in an effort to sell it to the largest audience it can possibly draw in an opening weekend.

Ask any director or creative in Hollywood to confirm this for you. Zack Snyder. Spike Lee. Ava Duvernay. Michael Bay. David Ayer. Andy Serkis. Alfonso Cuaron. Martin Scorsese. Mike Flanagan. The Coen Brothers. Odds are if you’re reading this, you know all of those names, and yes I did pick them all for a reason, because they are the ones that helped start this new “precedent” long before the Snyders even met with WarnerMedia brass about Justice League.

Every single one of those Hollywood creatives has directed or produced a project for Netflix, the godfather of The Streaming Age. That’s what truly started all of this already.

The biggest reason I have been a massive proponent of the streaming era is because I believe Hollywood as a traditional entity and industry is overdue for an evolution. All the problematic issues it faces with everything mentioned above need to be seriously addressed, and a level of power needs to be returned to the creatives with respect to their storytelling. This is something that WB, Disney, Sony, Paramount and Universal can’t afford to do in the traditional marketplace because of how it’s structured. Their business model is wholly dependent on box office projections and expectations to survive, so whatever changes they feel need to be made to make more money in an opening weekend are going to happen no matter what, because the end goal isn’t art, it’s return on investment.

With streaming, the box office expectation is eliminated. Now the standard is to produce something unique and attention-grabbing to get people in the door of your streaming service, in hopes that it will drive them to explore the service as a whole and become a long-term subscriber. Instead of “how many times can we get them to spend $14 for each showing?” it’s “how many people can we get to spend $14.99 every month and for how long?” You’re not worried about 3X multipliers, you want eyeballs and traffic to your service.

It’s a whole new system of metrics that are still being very much worked out, but the point is that the pressure is much, much different than the traditional market expectations, and that is why we have seen so many of these Hollywood creatives make the move to it. Ayer’s Bright, Duvernay’s When They See Us, Serkis’ Mowgli, Cuaron’s Roma, which sparked controversy at the Oscars about non-theatrically released films getting nominated, Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game, The Coen Brothers’ Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and yes even Michael Bay’s Six Underground. All projects that arguably would be stuck in development hell, uncertain to even see the light of day in a traditional market structure, made with significantly more creative freedom for Netflix.

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, which is well over 3 hours long ended up with only Netflix as an option for release, and Scorsese is Hollywood royalty. When one of your titans has to find a home for his work on streaming because the studios aren’t willing to support it, that’s a sign of times massively changing for certain. Five years ago the idea of one of the pioneers of the 70’s Hollywood expansion having to rely on Netflix to get his movie made would have been heresy. Now it’s gospel.

So you’ve got to believe that when Zack Snyder openly praised Netflix for the amount of freedom he has been given on Army of the Dead, WarnerMedia took notice, remembered which way the wind has been blowing in the industry lately, and took an opportunity to literally bring him “home,” given that despite the polarization surrounding his films, he has made WB billions at the box office in his time. It was never about being bullied by fans, it was about taking advantage of a trend that is becoming a standard in the industry transition. Why would you want a well-respected by his peers creative like Snyder to continue helping Netflix in the Streaming Wars, when you can have him make a huge splash for your own new entry into the battle, HBO Max?

As far as whether or not this transition and precedent of increased creative freedom on streaming services is for the worse, that depends on who you are and how it affects you. If you’re a consumer that hates spending $14 a pop for a ticket(much more if you have a whole family), doesn’t feel like spending gas on a trip to the theater and wants the convenience of original content at home, and you appreciate creative freedom for directors and storytellers in general without a boardroom of executives slicing up your favorite movie because it wasn’t short enough to fit into multiple screen times, then this is absolutely for the better in your case.

But if you’re a critic that relies on advance screenings and the theatrical model for people to pay attention to your opinion, or a blogger that enjoys all the swag and perks the studios give you at press events, or a YouTuber that needs all of the above to basically survive in addition to your rampant hate marketing, then this does feel like tyranny to you, because you are losing your importance and your impressionability. You know I don’t put much stock into Rotten Tomatoes at all, but just for fun go look at some of the ratings and reviews they’ve given for streaming movies in general. Is it really just because they’re crappy Netflix movies subjectively speaking, especially since there’s likely at least a few that you really enjoy? Or is it also because Netflix and streaming services in general signal the end for movie critic value as we know it? When Spike Lee’s new film Da 5 Bloods comes out on June 12, I and many others won’t need to read a single review from a single critic, blogger or YouTuber to help us decide whether or not we are going to watch it, because we can just turn on Netflix at home and see for ourselves, without any extra money commitment, with our own concessions in the kitchen, and not even leaving the house.

That’s why they think this is a bad precedent, because it’s continuing the one that is pushing to make them obsolete in the not too distant future, and they don’t like that. You can’t blame them for the sense of self-preservation, but if they have anyone to blame it’s not WarnerMedia, AT&T or Zack Snyder. They should point the finger at Hollywood itself for fostering decades of a problematic culture that has squeezed and bullied creatives for years, and openly ignored the streaming transition until now, when Netflix started leading the revolution to pull the rug out from under them.

Hollywood helped start this precedent. Scream into the void about them, not the Snyder Cut fans.