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Days after Netflix’s highly publicized withdrawal from the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, the streaming giant touched upon the flap in messages to investors.
With revenue and audience growth higher than anticipated in the first quarter of 2018 ($3.6 billion from 125 million members worldwide), Netflix restated its opposition to showing its films at Cannes unless those movies are free to compete for prizes. Cannes requires competition films to be shown in French theaters, which means Netflix would have to follow the draconian Media Chronology Law designed to protect movie theaters from video on-demand services.
“We regret our films not being able to compete at this year’s Cannes film festival,” the company writes in a letter to shareholders on Monday.
“The festival adopted a new rule that means if a film is in competition at Cannes, it can not be watched on Netflix in France for the following three years. We would never want to do that to our French members.”
The company added, “We will continue to celebrate our films and filmmakers at other festivals around the world but unfortunately we will have to sit out Cannes for now so that our growing French membership can continue to enjoy our original films.”
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos added an additional comment during the company’s earnings YouTube interview on Monday.
“We released 33 films in theaters last year,” Sarandos said. “Defining distribution by what room you see it in is not the business we want to be in.”
Sarandos made no mention of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, a non-competing film he pulled from Cannes.
Wellesnet has reached out to Netflix about its premiere plans for The Other Side of the Wind, but not received a response.
Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux told French radio he sent a letter on Monday to Netflix seeking to find a solution.
He praised the Netflix for financing the completion of The Other Side of The Wind.
“Netflix are cinephiles, people of taste who love cinema, and who have have made possible what was never done before,” Fremaux said.
Orson Welles’ youngest daughter, Beatrice, has asked Netflix to put aside its differences with the prestigious festival for the sake of her late father’s legacy and show The Other Side of the Wind outside of competition as originally planned.
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