Chapter 12

The Impact of Digital Television on Cinema

Today’s major movie studios are almost exclusively in the “tent pole” blockbuster event franchise business, with an emphasis on comic book superheroes, movie versions of mega-popular video games, toys, theme park rides and adaptations of bestselling books. This trend (which I pray is a trend) has relegated smaller, mid-budget and indie movies to the film festival circuit and straight to cable or digital networks, negating the big screen, cinematic experience for these worthy but more personal and/or political/controversial/challenging stories. (My favorite movie decade remains the 1970s when movies were provocative and had a social conscience.)

These days, instead of a 2-hour movie about iconic characters in extraordinary situations, now we get a full season or multiple seasons for a much deeper dive into story. Even a great movie can be analogous to an amazing one-night stand, but a great TV series is a relationship that can span many years. If, for example, Argo had been a limited TV series, think of all the richly complex characters we would have had the chance to get to know over time.

The Slow Burn

Breaking Bad creator/showrunner, Vince Gilligan, has famously said that his concept for the show was to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface. If you’ve seen the brilliant Oliver Stone scripted/Brian DePalma directed classic movie, Scarface, you can imagine a similar treatment for a Breaking Bad movie—which would have been compelling, suspenseful and fulfilling in its own right. But, c’mon! The gradually unfolding narrative is way more tantalizing, although, admittedly, far more time consuming. Imagine a Scarface TV series and you’d end up with something very much like Netflix’s terrific and brutally compelling Narcos. Arguments can be made for or against both mediums. Though a bonus upside: Movie exhibitors make their money from (woefully overpriced) concessions. Watching movies and TV at home via Netflix (or many other platforms) is much more economical, if you also figure in free parking and microwave popcorn. Does this mean TV is going to continue to supplant cinema?

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

In September 2015, New York Times film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott engaged in an insightful, spot-on, eloquent debate on the future of the movie business as it continues to co-exist with the burgeoning digital television revolution. “It’s the worst of times, the best of times all over again, even if it’s mostly just changing times,” Dargis ruminated. “The diversity of work from across the globe and on big and small screens is as astonishing as it is overwhelming. And while creators and consumers have each embraced on-demand as an ethos, people still go out to see movies. A few years ago I worried that movie theaters faced mass closures, as when television swept the country in the 1950s, another era of industry crisis and change. But there are 40,000 movie screens in the United States. I don’t like much that plays on those screens, but the movies aren’t dying. As always, they are mutating. And in a sense the movies are bigger than ever as every television program that aspires to cinema shows.”¹

It’s true; there is hope for cinema. By September 2015, Universal had grossed over $2 billion that year—and that was just domestically, surprisingly. The studio’s 2 breakout, sleeper hits were Trainwreck (Amy Schumer and Judd Apatow’s romantic comedy) and Straight Outta Compton (the biopic of artists Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre and their peers). Both are mid-range in budget yet have experienced success—perhaps it’s long-predicted superhero fatigue setting in, as well as the strong votes of confidence from the execs who shepherded these movies to the big screen? Admittedly, three of Universal’s hits were the action-packed behemoth Jurassic World (directed by Colin Trevorrow, in a career-defining leap up from his previous indie movie Safety Not Guaranteed) as well as Minions and Furious 7, but none involved super powers, as such. All benefited from strong word-of-mouth, always the best marketing. As Scott also observed, these successful releases remind the industry: “Women go to the movies! black people, too! And, more than that, movies that reflect the demographic reality of the world we all inhabit can have very wide—and profitable—appeal. Which is only to state the obvious fact that a lot of the ticket buyers for Compton were white, and a lot of Trainwreck fans were men.”

Although Trainwreck and Compton are notable exceptions, signifying there may be a paradigm shift at some point, for now the mid-to-low budget yet high quality, non-event theatrical movie business continues to contract. Simultaneously, the business of making movies for television, as opposed to what were once known in the TV biz as MOWs (“Movies of the Week”), is blossoming and flourishing. A bonus for the cable and digital networks is that their made-for-TV original movies can be exported as theatrical releases in other countries. Take, for example, Sony Crackle’s first original direct-to-TV movie, The Throwaways, starring James Caan and Donnie Wahlberg. The mid-to-low-budget movie was shot in cost-effective, non-union Bulgaria, and streamed on the Crackle network in the US. But Sony also has the ability to air the dubbed or subtitled comedy-action-adventure movie on either one of its worldwide linear TV networks, or release it in theaters outside the US. For Sony Television, the longtime studio of Seinfeld, this is what’s known as “double-dipping.” It’s not only completely legal; it’s also smart business.

Streaming has yielded further interesting, cross-pollinated projects. For instance, Cary Fukunaga’s movie Beasts of No Nation for Netflix, starring Idris Elba (The Wire; Luther) is a West African civil war tale that brings together extraordinary talents that were traditionally only available in theaters or via premium cable. Fukunaga, who directed Sin Nombre, transitioned from True Detective, Season 1 to digital. Talent now moves fluidly across the whole spectrum of the industry, no longer limited to broadcast, premium cable/digital or movies. (See my section on The De-stigmatization of Digital Television below.)

And Dargis and Scott remain optimistic: “For all the changes in the on-demand, multi-platform, streaming, fluid entertainment media world, the one constant is that the movies continue to have a profound hold on us … They hold us the way they have for the past century—with visual style, narrative techniques, bigger-than-life stars, human stories and familiar genres—except that where once the studio biopic mythologized Madame Curie it now does the same for Ice Cube. The movies entertain us, bore us, transport us, move and enrage us, divert us from the world’s problems or inspire us to solve them. They remain, in other words and in spite of everything, one of the sublime pleasures of modern life.”

Despite the proliferation and success of digital networks, the movie business survives. With movies more popular than ever around the world across multiple platforms, what we’re experiencing is a made-for-TV Renaissance.

Netflix and the Marvel Universe

Superheroes are now also ubiquitous on broadcast television. Look at your local listings for Arrow, The Flash, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Gotham, and look up in the sky, it’s not a bird or a plane or a man: It’s Supergirl (CBS’ hotly anticipated series for the fall, 2015—that may have already been canceled?) While digital television networks try to be revolutionary and pioneering, the superhero was a bandwidth bandwagon they just couldn’t resist.

In the fall of 2013, Disney and Netflix announced a landmark deal on Marvel TV. Netflix, together with producers Marvel Television/ABC Television Studios committed to a minimum of 4, 13-episode series, which will eventually culminate in Marvel’s The Defenders miniseries event. In their own words, “Led by a series focused on Daredevil, followed by Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage, the epic will unfold over multiple years of original programming, taking Netflix members deep into the gritty world of the heroes and villains of Hell’s Kitchen, New York.”²

Ted Sarandos of Netflix explained, “Marvel’s movies, such as Iron Man and Marvel’s The Avengers, are huge favorites on our service around the world. Like Disney, Marvel is a known and loved brand that travels … with House of Cards and our other original series, we have pioneered new approaches to storytelling and to global distribution and we’re thrilled to be working with Disney and Marvel to take our brand of television to new levels with a creative project of this magnitude.” Alan Fine, President of Marvel Entertainment enthused, “Netflix offers an incredible platform for the kind of rich storytelling that is Marvel’s specialty.”

Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix

Steven S. DeKnight:
Executive Producer/Showrunner

A year after the Daredevil film rights reverted back to Marvel Studios from 20th Century Fox in October, 2012, Marvel and Disney announced plans for a Netflix live action series. Drew Goddard was hired on as Executive Producer and showrunner, but by May 2014 he stepped down as showrunner in order to direct a feature film.

Enter Steven S. DeKnight who took the reins as showrunner for Marvel’s Daredevil, chronicling the efforts of crime fighter, Matt Murdock (played by Charlie Cox). Blinded as a boy from exposure to a radioactive substance, Murdock develops extra sensory perception, including the ability to detect if someone is lying from his/her heart rate—even from across a room. Ably assisted by his former college dorm mate and current best buddy, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson (Elden Henson), and their office assistant Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Matt works as a defense attorney by day, and masked vigilante by night; his cane doubles as a multifaceted lethal weapon and he’s remarkably adept at Parkour. In short, he’s a badass. Underestimate him at your own peril—which is precisely what befalls the series’ villainous Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). While based upon a comic book, this iteration of Daredevil is a grounded superhero who feels both physical and psychological pain; when he suffers wounds, they take time to heal (just as Ben Affleck’s career gradually recovered following the ill-fated feature film of the same title from 2003).

I worked with Steve DeKnight at the beginning of his career on the writing staff of MTV’s late-night series, Undressed (1999–2000). He was a prolific, bright talent then, and obviously destined for greater success as writer, producer, and director. Steven segued from MTV to the world of Joss Whedon: from Staff Writer/Story Editor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001–2002), to Co-Producer/Supervising Producer on Angel 2002–2004), to Co-Executive Producer on Smallville (2004–2007), and consulting producer on Dollhouse (2009)—all under the auspices of Joss Whedon.

In 2009, DeKnight became the creator, showrunner and Executive Producer of Starz original series Spartacus for all 3 of its seasons and its prequel; part 1 was entitled “Blood and Sand”; part 2, “Gods of the Arena” (2011); the final season was entitled “War of the Damned” (2013). Equal parts Gladiator and Caligula, with Shakespearean undertones, Spartacus attracted a huge worldwide audience; they may have tuned in for the sensationalism, but they’d stay tuned for the juicy dramatic plotlines, distinctive characters, and awesome battle scenes. The series pushed the limits of graphic violence and full frontal (male and female) nudity, but DeKnight worked closely with history consultants to keep the action, both inside and outside of the arena, historically credible.

Riding high on his successes with both Daredevil and Spartacus, Steven DeKnight joined the Transformers writing room from summer 2015, focusing his efforts with Paramount Pictures, Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and Hasbro to create prequels, sequels, and spinoffs to the hugely successful franchise.

In April 2015, Netflix and Marvel announced that Daredevil would be renewed for a second season set for release in 2016, with Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez as co-showrunners and Executive Producers; Petrie and Ramirez served as Co-Executive Producers on Daredevil’s first season. Petrie and Goddard had also worked with DeKnight during his tenure on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Spartacus and Daredevil have attracted legions of avid followers at ComicCon, which fits perfectly with DeKnight’s sensibility as a self-proclaimed fan-boy and comic book geek. Even back in his staff writer days at Undressed, I recall his fondness for a T-shirt bearing the Superman logo. His nickname around the production office was Super Steve DeKnight.

Neil Landau: I’d like to start at the end. But it’s a question that’s on everyone’s mind. As I understand it, Daredevil was only meant to be 1 season, and then Netflix picked it up for Season 2. Was your plan only to do 1 season and go onto other projects, or did you change your mind about staying on, or …?

Steven S. DeKnight: There was always a possibility that, if the show did well, it would get a second season. For me, I came in to help out a couple of old friends: Drew Goddard, who originally created the show and wrote the first 2 episodes, and Jeff Loeb who runs Marvel Television. I knew them both back through my Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] days—I worked with Drew on Buffy, and again on Angel, and I worked with Jeff Loeb on the Buffy animated show that Fox was developing, and then again on Smallville. And when Drew had to go do the Sinister Six, I came in to help out. But it was with the understanding that I had a feature script that I had written that Paramount was interested in making with me directing. So I told everybody, “Listen, there’s a very strong chance that I’m going to have to go and do this.” And, towards the end of the first season, that movie project started heating up again, so that’s the reason I had to take off.

NL: Well, it’s great that you were able to help guide the tone and the style, to be a part of the vision of Season 1, which will carry forward as they go into Season 2. Onward! So … how it was working with Netflix? I’ve interviewed a lot of Netflix showrunners and content creators, and Netflix is known for being very hands-off as a network. Marvel, on the other hand is known for being very hands-on. I just wondered how they coexisted? How was the marriage?

SD: Yeah, you know, it was very interesting! I’d gone from network television to premium cable when I went from [Joss Whedon’s] Dollhouse [on Fox] to Spartacus on Starz—which is premium cable without the restrictions of broadcast network Standards and Practices. Plus, I only had to do 10–13 episodes; didn’t have to have act breaks—so that was really the huge leap. Going from premium cable to streaming, from Starz to Netflix, was a much smaller leap. Really, the creative process didn’t change; we were still writing scripts the same with no act breaks, still had quite a bit of creative freedom, and at Netflix, especially in the beginning, we had independence! It’s not that they don’t have notes—they have a bit less notes than networks, about the same notes as premium cable—but they’re very open-minded and respectful. And this is a similar experience I had at Starz: if you explained to them why you want to do something, it’s a real conversation that ends more often than not with them saying, “Okay! You know, you guys are the ones making the show, we just want to know why you’re making certain decisions.” That’s a climate you sometimes don’t get on a network, where you get notes and you have a conversation, and you’re told, “No, just do the notes.” Netflix is very much creator-friendly.

NL: I interviewed Marta Kauffman, who’s doing Grace and Frankie for Netflix. The way she put it is that Netflix is great at giving the “macro-note”—which she really appreciates.

SD: Yeah, very much the “macro” style of notes, where in the networks—this is not true of every network, but I found you often got a lot of “micro-notes.”

NL: Streaming networks also have the luxury of not having to worry about ratings, whereas broadcast and basic cable networks are always anxious; even when a show’s a monster hit, they want to make sure it stays a monster hit.

SD: Exactly—there’s really no winning. If your show is on the bubble, you get tortured, and if your show’s a hit, you get tortured.

NL: But paid handsomely—which can certainly help! Even though you don’t have act breaks for commercials on Netflix, I feel there is still a really solid sense of structure. When you’re breaking story, are you still breaking story where you’re cognizant of act breaks?

SD: The big difference is on a network show, the standard for 1-hour dramas used to be a teaser and 4 acts—when they shifted it from when I started, the teaser and 4 acts—you actually get some momentum between act breaks. Once they chopped it up to squeeze in more commercials, it’s very difficult to get any momentum between act breaks because they’re so short. So the way I approached structure—when I started with Spartacus, and there were no act breaks—I went to a 3-act structure, very much a feature film structure, for each script. It’s a very loose thing; I don’t ever sit down and say “Okay, here’s Act 1, Act 2, Act 3,” but I do very much approach it as, “Okay, here’s the first act, where the problem is set up; here’s the second act where there’s a complication; and here’s the third act, where we explore the resolution.” So that’s my approach, very much a feature approach, when there are no standardized act breaks.

NL: A lot of showrunners I’ve talked to, where they’re doing a 10-episode order or even a 13-episode order, they break it down where the whole contiguous season is 1 long movie.

SD: Yeah, exactly, I’ve always done the same thing. Before we start writing, we’ll have the layout, the idea for each episode, and then very much in the macro scale, lay out a feature, where here’s the first act, here’s the second act, here’s the third act. I think it translates really well to a 10- to 13-episode order.

NL: The tone and the style of Daredevil are very different than the traditional comic book. It’s grittier and darker. We feel every hit; it’s not just cartoon violence or even a traditional superhero; Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox) gets hurt; he bleeds; he suffers as he recuperates. I think maybe it follows more along the Christopher Nolan tone where everything’s more grounded. How detailed are you in scripts about fight sequences, like at the end of episode 2?

SD: I’m always a big fan of being as detailed as possible. To me, the important thing—this is something that came from Spartacus— you never just type “They fight!” The important thing about the fights were, what are the emotional stakes, what does each person want, and the emotion of the fight. For example, in Daredevil at the end of episode 2 with Cutman, with that one long take, when I first got the script from Drew Goddard, since he wrote the first 2, it was very much written. You know, here it’s one continuous take, and he went through all the steps of the fight as a blueprint, and then of course we bring in the DP [Director of Photography], the director, and the fight coordinator. Especially with the fight coordinator who figures out what we can do within this structure, and then they start adding to it. I’m also a huge fan of giving fight scenes to the stunt coordinator and saying, these are the beats we need to hit for emotional reasons. Within that context, I want you feel free to experiment. With Daredevil, our fantastic stunt coordinator, Philip J Silvera, would videotape each of the fights, edit them together and send it to me so we could talk about it and make little changes here and there, which is a huge help.

NL: They’re super violent and yet really inventive. There’s always some twist or something I hadn’t seen before done in a cool way. I have teenage sons, and they LOVE the show. They like dark! They play games, and you know, they participate, so if they’re not participating in watching a fight, they’re connoisseurs in a way. Daredevil really delivers that, and I feel it’s part of the success.

SD: You touched on an interesting thing, on how violent the show is. Obviously I have a very high scale of what I consider violence since I worked on Spartacus, which I think is hard R/NC-17, which worked for the material. For this, obviously I didn’t want to go that far at all. I’m always shocked at some of the reactions—I’ve seen reactions on Twitter of “why’d they have to make it so violent? I almost threw up, I can’t watch,” and I’m like, “WHAT?!” I always look at the Walking Dead, which is a show that I love, that is so well made, and the violence in that show is so much more graphic. I mean, that’s like R-rated. And it completely works, and it should be R-rated. On this show, we wanted to make it violent but not that graphic. In Episode 3, where Fisk’s hitman, John Healy [Alex Morf] kills with the bowling ball? It’s off camera. And you know, the same thing where Wilson Fisk [chillingly played by Vincent D’Onofrio] decapitates the guy with the car door, you see some stuff oozing out from under the car, but you never see the head crushed, we never go that far. But I think people think it’s actually more violent because it’s in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where you don’t see this level of violence or realism. And again, I LOVE the movies. I eat that stuff up.

NL: Look at Psycho! You never saw the knife stab Janet Leigh in the shower, but everybody came away thinking they did. The imagination does tend to fill in the gory details.

SD: Yeah! Which I think works really well on the show, and that I wanted to do. You know, every now and then you’ll see a bone poking through an arm briefly, but that’s generally as graphic as it’ll get, and everything else is off-screen and you see the result afterwards.

NL: Another standout of the season is the relationship between Matt and Claire Temple [Rosario Dawson]. Did you make a conscious effort in the writers’ room not to create the expected love story, or that’s going to be a very slow burn, and maybe we’ll see it later?

SD: That went through various permutations. Originally, it was planned that they would sleep together at the end of Episode 4 when Matt rescues her. Once I got in there, a couple of things happened; there was a version of the script where they sleep together. My immediate gut reaction was, she’s just been kidnapped and brutally beaten, it feels a little odd for those two to sleep together. It feels emotionally wrong. Also, as we started working more and more on the characters, I felt like that’s the expected way to go, but more than that, let’s look at the character of Matt, that he’s deeply damaged at this point and at no emotional state at this point to have a healthy relationship. Which on some level I think he knows, even though he wants it. And I also wanted to make Claire very smart; she knows this is a guy who’s damaged as much as she cares about him. Even more importantly to me, keeping with that idea of making this as realistic and grounded as possible, I wanted this relationship messy. You know, two people who really care about each other, but it really doesn’t work out. Everybody’s been there.

NL: It goes against convention and expectation; I think that’s one of the great strengths of this iteration of the Marvel world.

SD: I’ve been involved with Smallville that for many years had a running love story between Clark and Lana. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but I really wanted to avoid making Daredevil a soap opera. We do have, you know, Foggy’s interested in Karen, but it’s all very much the background; I didn’t want that to become a love triangle with Matt. Karen obviously has some interest in Matt. I wanted that to be more spice, not the main dish. I didn’t want the show to live or die on who shtups who, or who wants who to be together. I really wanted it to be that gritty crime-drama.

NL: On that, which is another thing about the show that feels very fresh and different, especially in the Marvel world, is Wilson Fisk. Episode 8 was my favorite; I’m not just saying that because you wrote it! What’s so cool about that episode is we don’t normally see antagonists’ backstories. And Fisk is very complex, having lived with his father’s brutal murder on his conscience. There’s blood on his hands and a dark shadow that started when he was an innocent boy. My question is why it became important to have the audience to sympathize with the adult monster who is Wilson Fisk? Sure, we got some of that with Heath Ledger’s amazing portrayal of Joker in The Dark Knight. But then we realized he was constantly changing his backstory; you know, he was just kind of fucking with us. But with Wilson, we have genuine empathy. What was your dramatic strategy with his character?

SD: You know, for me, it goes back the way I approached the antagonist in Spartacus; I wanted Batiatus to be multidimensional. I wanted the audience to like him, root for him, even when he was doing horrible things—to have that feeling that he’s an interesting character, and a fun character. And I remember when I killed him at the end of Season 1, a lot of people were outraged, sent me messages like, he didn’t deserve that! And I was like, the guy killed women and children! He murdered Spartacus’ wife! Of course he deserved it! But I was happy people had that reaction. With Wilson Fisk, I felt very much the same way, and Ben has a line in the season where he says there are no heroes or villains, just people with different agendas. Which echoes a thing that Crassus said in Spartacus, you know, who’s the hero, who’s the villain? Inevitably, history will decide.

For me, the best villains are always the ones who think they’re the hero. With Fisk, we really wanted to make him human. Drew Goddard had a great setup when I read episode 1—originally, Fisk meets Vanessa in the art gallery at the end of episode 1. I pushed it to the end of episode 3 to give it more buildup, that you’re going to meet this horrible person and, when you do, he’s a lonely guy staring at a painting that’s so abstract it’s almost blank. You’re not exactly sure why this painting makes him feel alone, that comes around later. It was very important not to make this a 2-dimensional mustache-twirling crime lord, and also the fact that we wanted Wilson Fisk to be basically the other side of the coin to Matt Murdock. That they both grew up in Hell’s Kitchen for at least part of their lives, and they both want to save the city, but they have very different ways of approaching it, and very different father figures. In a movie, you just can’t take that time to really flesh out the antagonist and build it out, so we’re very fortunate we had the time.

NL: There seems to be an insatiable appetite from young audiences for superheroes in many different forms. Why do you feel that superheroes resonate so powerfully and timelessly with audiences?

SD: You go back to Joseph Campbell; it’s the journey of the hero; it’s mythology. You know, comics, in a lot of ways, are Greek mythology now. To listen to these stories around the campfire of these heroes overcoming insurmountable odds, I think that speaks to something really primal inside all of us. It’s a combination of elements that I think really brought it together. It’s a combination of the right characters with the right technology, with the right execution. All those together—a huge part of it is, you know, Marvel taking back creative control of their property, and not shying away from the material but treating it with respect, which, back in the day, when they had to sell off piecemeal the rights to their characters, you would see a lot of changes not really made for story reasons, but because they were being made by people who didn’t grow up with comics, didn’t really understand comics, thought they were really kids’ stuff.

Coming from that kind of place of sincerity and heart and love, I think really makes a huge difference. That combined with the Hero’s Journey. I’ve been asked many times about the glut of superheroes, and do I think it’s going to implode. My answer is always the same—is there a glut of comedies, a glut of dramas? As long as they keep making good movies, people will keep going to see them.

NL: And because this is a series, you can go much deeper and explore the characters and there doesn’t have to be years for the next one in the franchise. You know, I hate to say it, but, for the most part, I prefer to watch some of the best premium and streaming shows instead of going to the movies. I see less movies and watch way more television now.

SD: It’s such a golden age in television, with basic cable, premium cable, and now the streaming services. Because there are so many different opportunities, and the audience is so fractured, I’ve found over the last 10, 15 years with these new outlets, they’re much more willing to take a chance and do something “outside the box.” You see it time and time again—you saw it with The Sopranos, with Breaking Bad, where you don’t have to have 50 million people tune in (or, more like 12 million now). It really frees you up to try different things, and to take that risk. Talking about comic book adaptations on television, I am thrilled with the work that DC’s doing and now that Marvel’s doing—what I love is that you can have a show like Daredevil, which is dark and gritty and crime-drama, and at the same time you can have a show like The Flash, which I think captures the right tone; I was flipping channels the other day, and I sat down to watch an episode of The Flash. The little kid in me was overjoyed that I was finally seeing Gorilla Grodd on screen, and I couldn’t believe it was on television! And it looked great, and it was so much fun. Whatever your particular tastes are—if you want something fun and fast and thrilling, you can get it, if you want something dark and moody and somewhat stately paced, you can find that too.

See also: Jessica Jones on Netflix: adapter/Executive Producer/showrunner: Melissa Rosenberg (the Twilight movie franchise; Dexter, Red Widow), due to premiere shortly after press time. And ABC’s Agent Carter. Rave reviews for its first season that premiered in January 2015, written by Marvel wonder-duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Captain America: The First Avenger; Thor: The Dark World; Avengers: Infinity War parts 1 and 2).

The De-stigmatization of Digital Television

To wit: A-List film directors, producers, and movie stars are migrating to streaming series. For decades, movies were king, and doing a TV project was, by and large, considered slumming. In the early 2000s, HBO ushered in the era of premium cable, and, gradually, the perceived wall (“You can’t do TV, it’ll destroy your movie career”) between big and small screen came crashing down.

Consider the following historical context (and please forgive me for selectively encapsulating their credits and accolades, due to space limitations)—

First Came Premium Cable …

• Academy Award winning director, Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, The Birdcage), directs the HBO movie Wit in 2001, starring Emma Thompson; and Angels in America as a miniseries for HBO in 2003, starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Emma Thompson. Both projects were based upon Pulitzer Prize winning stage plays.
• Legendary cineaste and Academy Award winning director Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed) directs and executive produces HBO’s original series Boardwalk Empire in 2011 (and won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 2012).

From Premium Cable to Digital…

• Two-time Academy Award nominated director David Fincher (Se7en, Panic Room, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Gone Girl) directs and executive produces the US remake of House of Cards, a Netflix Original series in 2013.
• Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven) directs and executive produces the drama series K Street for HBO in 2003; the HBO Original movie Behind the Candelabra about Liberace starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in 2013; the historical medical drama series The Knick for Cinemax in 2014; and ultimately serves as Executive Producer on the nostalgic dramedy series Red Oaks for Amazon Studios in 2014.
• Four-time Academy Award nominated writer/director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult, Thank You for Smoking) directs and executive produces the half-hour dramedy Casual, a Hulu Original series in 2015. (See my interview with series Creator/Executive Producer Zander Lehmann in Chapter 13.)
• Four-time Academy Award winning writer/director Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors) writes, directs and executive produces a top secret dramedy series for Amazon Studios (2016). In an exclusive Deadline Hollywood interview with Mike Fleming, Jr. (5/14/15) during the Cannes Film Festival, when asked how he reconciles his avoidance of computers and iPads with his signing on to create a TV series for Amazon’s streaming service, Allen divulged he initially didn’t even know what a streaming service was, barely watches TV and eventually caved after 18 months of Amazon offering him increasingly more freedom and money. But, he admitted, “I have regretted every second since I said ‘OK.’ It’s been so hard for me. I had the cocky confidence, well, I’ll do it like I do a movie … it’ll be a movie in 6 parts. Turns out, it’s not. For me, it has been very, very difficult. I’ve been struggling and struggling and struggling. I only hope that when I finally do it—I have until the end of 2016—they’re not crushed with disappointment because they’re nice people and I don’t want to disappoint them. I am doing my best. I fit it in between films, so it’s not like, no film this year, I’m doing Amazon. It’s a job within my usual schedule. But I am not as good at it as I fantasized I might be. It’s not a piece of cake; it’s a tough thing and I’m earning every penny that they’re giving me and I just hope that they don’t feel, ‘My God, we gave him a very substantial amount of money and freedom and this is what he gives us?’ […] I hope it’s just the anxiety again, but this is hard. I’m like a fish out of water.”
• Academy Award nominated director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet, The Great Gatsby) writes/directs/show-runs his aforementioned longtime pet project, The Get Down for Netflix. The series, co-created with Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Mad Dogs, Terriers), is a musical-drama/mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco. In a departure from Luhrmann’s usually extravagant style, the show takes place in the Bronx tenements, the SoHo art scene, CBGB, Studio 54 and the just-built World Trade Center. The 13-episode series will be dark and gritty—with hip-hop music. Along with TV veteran Jimmy Smits (NYPD Blue, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy), the new series features mainly newcomers, including Justice Smith (Paper Towns), Shameik Moore (Dope), Skylan Brooks, Tremaine Brown Jr., Herizen Guardiola and Jaden Smith (Karate Kid 2, The Pursuit of Happyness).

  As reported by Cynthia Littleton in Variety (2/5/15), The Get Down focuses on a group of street-smart teenagers from one of the hardest hit areas, the South Bronx.” Baz Luhrmann goes on to describe, “Netflix’s commercial-free environment and reputation for giving creatives wide berth in storytelling made it a natural home for Get Down … . I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half destroyed, could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture … I’m thrilled to be working with my partners at Sony and collaborating with a team of extraordinary writers and musicians, many of whom grew up with and lived the story we’ve set out to tell.”

  Luhrmann and Ryan are Executive Producers, along with Academy Award winning production and costume designer Catherine Martin, who is married to Luhrmann and is his frequent collaborator, as well as Paul Watters, Thomas Kelly, Stephen Adly Guirgis and Marney Hochman. Netflix has ordered 13 episodes to debut in 2016. Luhrmann will direct the first 2 episodes and the final episode of the initial order. Cindy Holland, Netflix’s VP of Original Content said, “Baz conjures worlds we may not recognize initially, but once there, realize they are infused with the same dreams of every person—to belong, to matter, to live life to its fullest … We are thrilled to support Baz, Catherine and Paul and their team in their quest to illuminate those same dreams through the artists who came of age in the cauldron of the Bronx in the late 1970s.”

• Two-time Academy Award nominated director Spike Lee (Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, She’s Gotta Have It, 25th Hour, Inside Man) has been honored by the TV Academy for his outstanding body of work for television as well, including the Emmy Award winning documentary HBO film When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts in 2003; and he was nominated for the documentary 4 Little Girls in 1998. Lee’s first “Spike Lee joint” for digital television is entitled Chiraq about the escalating violence on the streets of Chicago. Chiraq is the first feature to be “fully financed” by Amazon Studios (although Lee has also invested in the film). As reported by Deadline Hollywood’s Ali Jaafar (9/11/15), Chiraq “once more finds Lee—one of the greatest chroniclers of America for over 30 years—front and center in the heart of the debate on gun laws and race relations in America … It is said to be inspired by the Greek comedy Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece band together and withhold sex until their men end the Peloponnesian War.” Co-written by Lee and Kevin Willmott (C.S.A: Confederate States Of America), the film has an ensemble cast: Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Hudson, D.B. Sweeney, Harry Lennix, Steve Harris, Angela Basset, John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and led by Teyonah Parris. On the positive, early buzz for the film, Lee commented, “I don’t really do anything I’m not excited about. I don’t do any film that my juices aren’t flowing. Film is the thing I love, film is my passion … This is going to be the first theatrical release; it’s a new branch with Amazon. So it’s not going to go straight onto Amazon Prime, it’s going to be in the theaters. Jeff Bezos is an innovator, he’s a visionary … I’m honored that they chose Chiraq to be their first theatrical release because you know when you step off the box and into the arena, a special arena where there are major studios, you’re seen as an enemy. You want to make sure that you’re coming out strong and so I think that they have confidence in this film or we wouldn’t be their first theatrical release… . many people want Amazon to fail. They don’t want Amazon to be successful. Therefore they don’t want this film to work either. But I’ve always been doing stuff against the odds starting from day 1 with my student thesis film.”
• Brad Pitt stars and produces and Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Winner, David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, Hesher, The Rover) directs the movie adaptation of author and Rolling Stone contributor Michael Hastings’ New York Times’ bestseller, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (based on true events). The satirical movie, re-titled War Machine (screenplay by the author), stars Academy Award winner Brad Pitt, Will Poulter and Topher Grace, and is produced by Pitt’s Plan B Productions and distributed by Netflix. Tragically, Hastings died in an automobile crash in 2013 in Los Angeles. Conspiracy theories abound. He was awarded the George Polk Award and the Norman Mailer Prize. (For the record, Michael Hastings has no relation to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.)
• Cary Joji Fukunaga made his feature debut with the extraordinary indie movie, Sin Nombre, which he wrote and directed. The film earned him the Directing award and won the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 2009. It was also nominated for 3 Independent Spirit Awards in 2010. As mentioned earlier, Fukunaga’s foray into television was HBO’s True Detective, Season 1, for which he won an Emmy for Outstanding Direction of a Drama Series in 2014. Fukunaga is directing the Netflix Original movie, Beasts of No Nation, with Idris Elba and newcomer Abraham Attah. Fukunaga has adapted the novel by Uzodinma Iweala, which tells the gripping, disturbing story of innocent child soldiers in Africa. My prediction: Beasts of No Nation will win several Oscars … a first for a digital television produced movie.

In a trailblazing move, Netflix intends to distribute Beasts of No Nation in theaters for a limited time while simultaneously making it available for streaming on its subscription service. Their strategy will qualify this provocative movie for Academy Award consideration. When Netflix Chief of Content Ted Sarandos was asked if he believes all Netflix’s filmmakers are going to seek a theatrical release on the big screen, his reply was: “I think when people say they want their movies to be in a theater, what they mean is they want their movies to matter, they want their movies to be in the culture. One thing that Netflix movies will do differently than direct-to-video movies is they will be in the culture. These movies will matter.”³

And as Spike Lee revealed, Amazon Studios is also planning to release Chiraq on the silver screen, though subsequently followed by Amazon Prime window rather than a concurrent release.

Never Underestimate the Emotional Tug of Nostalgia

I predict a small-scale resurgence of the revival house and even the drive-in movie theater for new generations of movie lovers to enjoy—as an occasional family night out, or for a make-out session in the backseat of the Prius. In many cities, movie screenings are also being presented at cemeteries for a unique viewing experience under the stars, and you get the added atmosphere of the gravestones—which can be particularly creepy while watching Night of the Living Dead. There’s also the interactive experience of Fabien Riggall’s “Secret Cinema,” which is expanding internationally.⁴ Secret Cinema reveals nothing to its audience beforehand except the location and movie title, and presents a fully immersive evening themed around the screening of a classic or cult movie. Clearly proving, once and for all, that such movies never die.