following the release of annihilation (2018) on Netflix in America, The Economist published a review titled “Is Netflix the New Straight-to-Video?” (NB). In it, the author takes note of a handful of other films that were dumped onto the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service over the past several years, including The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) and Mute (2018), after their distributors decided it would be more financially responsible to shunt the films onto someone else's shoulders. However, the central question raised by the review's title is not addressed outside of these initial comparisons. This is curious because the question is a salient one, increasingly relevant in a post-COVID-19 world, where theatrical exhibition is on precarious economic footing. While The Economist sidesteps its proposed question, I slightly adjust it to argue that digital streaming services that rely on subscription revenue as their business model have become the new home of direct-to-consumer...

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