In a recent interview alongside Jerry Bruckheimer with The Hollywood Reporter, Glass Onion director Rian Johnson expressed his fears and frustrations about the current Hollywood practice of canceling projects while they are still in production. Some streaming services have canceled their shows despite their popularity, while others have removed media from their websites entirely.
“It’s been horrifying,” Johnson admits. “The fact that it’s becoming common practice is terrible and adds to the awfulness. In the history of the business, there has been a constant evolution of horrible things.” While his recent Peacock exclusive show Poker Face has been renewed for a second season, Johnson holds some reservations about the future of streaming. From Netflix dropping distributing rights for The Inheritance to Kidding being removed from Showtime, most streaming services are eliminating their works to catch up with inflation and subscriber counts.
While some creatives share this sentiment, others have expressed interest in the streaming era’s lack of solid rules. Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy has expressed his excitement and nervousness about the current state of streaming, commenting on its chaos during a Writers Guild of America panel. He has called it exciting since “it doesn’t matter if you — two episodes, an episode and a half, five episodes, this, that, a play — it doesn’t matter,” there are no rules.
Even so, Johnson has expressed hope that future projects will still be able to find their audience after release. In the same interview, Jerry Bruckheimer stated, “Hopefully, the movies that they pull will get out there somewhere, on some platform, in the future.” According to both directors, the best way to move forward is to keep creating and reaching out to audiences.
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