After the Academy waffled earlier this year - led by Steven Spielberg - over whether or not to tighten eligibility rules to target streaming services, the Directors Guild of America actually did the thing, and tightened their eligibility rules. Under their new guidelines, day-and-date releases, in which a film premieres simultaneously in theaters and online, will not be eligible for the DGA award. A film will have to play exclusively in theaters for at least a week to qualify for the DGA. It’s not an outright Netflix ban, but this is an attempt to get Netflix to play by traditional distribution rules.
Which Netflix is already doing, by the way. Last year’s DGA winner was Roma, which opened in theaters three weeks before debuting on Netflix. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is expected to follow a similar release plan later this fall. One of Amazon’s award-season hopefuls, The Report starring Adam Driver, will play in theaters two weeks before arriving on Amazon Prime. So this DGA rule isn’t really blocking the streaming platforms from qualifying, it’s more about enforcing theatrical distribution as the standard (even as that window ever narrows). This summer has been kind of brutal at the box office, with only Avengers, Aladdin, and John Wick Chapter 3 exceeding expectations. Everything else, even Toy Story 4 has disappointed. We are speeding toward a world in which pretty much everything that isn’t a Disney movie or similarly-scaled spectacle is released on streaming, and not in theaters. The DGA has decided to do what they can to maintain even a sliver of theatrical exclusivity for films.
It’s a nice gesture, but that’s all it is—a gesture. The rule isn’t banning streaming services entirely, it’s just encoding a pattern they’ve already devised. And there is an exception, as the DGA’s First-Time Feature Film Award will be exempt from the theatrical distribution clause, which tacitly acknowledges it is more likely for new talent to come from a streaming service these days. It’s also not a rule that will last forever. Like Cannes banishing Netflix from competing for the Palme d’Or, eventually this rule, too, will have to be overturned. The DGA is sticking their finger in a dam that is already bursting. This summer is showing us audiences have pretty much made the switch, preferring to stay home for anything that isn’t a giant explosion. It’s only a matter of time until studios concede defeat, losing too much money in theatrical distribution to keep it up for anything but the surest of bets. We are just a matter of years—and not too many at that—away from that reality. The DGA is making a stand, but it’s a largely symbolic one.
