Steven Spielberg feels threatened by TV, wants kids to get off his lawn

Steven Spielberg is one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers, but even this one-time visionary seems to be living in the past.

There is nothing better than going to the movies and seeing a film on the giant screen with surround sound and no distractions. If you go to a theater that has too many distractions (cellphone users, thin walls, poor sound), find a new theater because the feeling of witnessing a movie in the format it was made for is priceless.

However, many new filmmakers are taking a different approach. They are making movies and selling them directly to Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime. There are other filmmakers who are taking big ideas and turning them into binge-watching series for streaming services as well — almost like a giant movie stretched over a few episodes.

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Netflix won its first Oscar this year with Icarus, the documentary about the Russian doping scandal at the Winter Olympic Games. While Spielberg has often broken ground in the filmmaking industry, he has always remained a traditionalist and he said in a recent interview with ITV News that movies made for television do not deserve Oscars.

This doesn’t mean that Steven Spielberg hates television. As a matter of fact, Spielberg is producing Amazing Stories for Apple’s streaming service. He has also been the executive producer on everything from Minority Report’s television adaptation and Falling Skies to Terra Nova and Band of Brothers.

However, Spielberg believes that only movies made for theatrical releases deserve Oscars and everything made for TV deserves an Emmy. He also feels that television is a threat to movies in general right now.

"Television is thriving with quality and heart.  But it poses a clear and present danger to filmgoers. I’ll still make The Post and ask an audience to please go out to theaters and see The Post and not make it for Netflix."

Here is the full video interview with Steven Spielberg.

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Netflix is working on 700 original series and movies for 2018 alone, according to Variety. It sounds like they are willing to put more gamble into successful projects than any major movie studio, so while Steven Spielberg is welcome to his opinion, things are looking to spread out between theatrical experiences and streaming options and it might be time to acknowledge that fact.