Nicolas Winding Refn Says Audiences Have to ‘Fight for’ Cinema: Streamers Are ‘Rotten with Money and Cocaine’

Nicolas Winding Refn is calling on Hollywood to save cinema, especially if it means taking the streamers down a peg or tow. The “Drive” and “Only God Forgives” director slammed streaming content for having “saturated everything” and “devalued” film to “just a swipe” during a tribute to Ruggero Deodato at the Venice Film Festival, as reported by Variety.

“It’s incredibly sad and terrifying because art is essentially the only thing — besides, you know, sex, water, and happiness — that makes us exist,” Refn said, while adding that streamers have been “overfunded and rotten with money and cocaine” for years. Refn previously helmed “Copenhagen Cowboy” for Netflix and “Too Old to Die Young” for Prime Video, which he claimed Amazon buried on the platform for fear of “looking bad.”

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The filmmaker walked back past statements that cinema was dead in the streaming era, and instead called on audiences to “fight for” the sanctity of the art form. “Even though I projected it was dead a few years ago, it has changed into something we have to fight for,” Refn said. “Theatrical movies are part of what makes us human and experience creativity. … AI is not an artist. AI is a product.”

Refn recently told IndieWire that amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the purpose of content itself needs to be reexamined. “We produce content as a business, but we speak so rarely about why are we making content,” Refn said earlier this year. “What’s the meaning of it? We never talk about why we’re making content. We just talk about making content and more of it and as fast as possible, and everything is becoming a swipe, but that’s not necessarily a healthy mirror to society or us as people.”

He continued, “The more empty it is, empty calories, the more you can consume it, the faster you can move past it. Out of that comes stupidity, lack of empathy, uneducated, all those things that art has the ability to contribute. So in a way, we’re going the wrong way. You know, we have never made more content than ever I think in our history of content producing, and I believe most people spend their time on figuring out what not to watch rather than to watch. So, isn’t maybe that also part of the problem. I think it’s a much more philosophical question that is more complex than just narrowing it down to profits because it all just becomes about money at the moment.”

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