Orson Welles directing The Other Side of the Wind.
Updated on May 29: Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos has told Variety that if the company was indeed barred from next year’s competition, executives would find it “less attractive” to bring its movies to Cannes. Netflix Europe spokesman Yann Lafargue told Point Pop, “If the new rule set by the festival is still in place in 2018, so be it, (The Other Side of the Wind) will be shown elsewhere.”
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The Cannes Film Festival has been publicly sparring with Netflix over theatrical runs of their original films, but that has not soured Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos on the idea of debuting Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind there next year.
Sarandos has been talking this week with Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux about having The Other Side of the Wind world premiere at the festival in May 2018.
“This is the place we’d like to have it,” Sarandos told Britain’s Telegraph at Cannes on Saturday.
He repeated that sentiment to a New York Times writer, saying “I’ve talked to Thierry many times and said this is where we’d like to show it.”
Netflix has the global distribution rights to the completion of Welles’ unfinished 1970s comeback film, which will be produced by Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marsahll. The streaming giant will also distribute a companion documentary by Oscar winner Morgan Neville.
Cannes has been vocal in its criticism of Netflix, which does not release its original films theatrically in France thanks to a French law that prohibits films from streaming online for three years after their theatrical run. Festival organizers stated that in the future any movies not released theatrically in France would be barred from competition.
Sarandos makes no bones that the pushback against his company’s presence at Cannes has been driven by French cinema-owners, who depend on the three-year law for a commercial advantage he believes is outdated.
“Our release strategy is not exclusionary of theaters,” Sarandos told The Telegraph, adding that in almost every country Netflix plans to offer their films to cinemas – just not before they’re available on the streaming service too.
Cannes has honored two Welles-directed films in the past with major awards: Othello in 1952 and Chimes at Midnight in 1966. Welles took home the best actor prize in 1958 for his role in Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion.
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