Late last month, Cannes Film Festival director Theirry Frémaux discussed the decision to ban films presented exclusively on streaming platforms from competition at Cannes. Netflix could potentially screen its films at the festival, he explained, but its movies would no longer be eligible to win the festival’s awards, including the Palme d’Or. As of this year, Cannes now requires that all competing films receive a theatrical run in France, which, as you know, is not really Netflix’s thing. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming platform is reportedly prepared to take their films home (specifically your home, where you will watch them from your sofa) and skip the film festival all together.
According to Vanity Fair, the films Netflix would hypothetically pull from the Cannes lineup would potentially include Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Paul Greengrass’s Norway, Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark, a finalized version of the unfinished Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind and Morgan Neville’s Orson Welles documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead. The festival’s official 2018 schedule, however, won’t be released until Thursday, April 12.
In 2017, two Netflix films, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories, made it into competition, a decision that drew criticism from some.“Last year, when we selected these two films, I thought I could convince Netflix to release them in cinemas,†Frémaux told THR in March. “I was presumptuous. They refused.â€