True Detective director Cary Fukunaga's upcoming movie Beasts of No Nation will be released on Netflix, but Fukunaga told a Tribeca Film Festival audience that he hoped people would still see it in and other movies like it in theaters.
The writer-director told former Focus CEO James Schamus that he's excited that the Netflix release will allow more people to see the difficult, dramatic film than if the movie was given a traditional platform release.
Though Fukunaga recently expressed his misgivings about the modern format, saying "The difficult part of defining yourself as a filmmaker is the concept of releasing a film on a digital platform at the same time its released in cinema really strikes the fear of God in your heart that people are actually still going to go to the cinema to watch the film when if they spend $6 a month they could watch it for free on their laptops."
He added, "That's the biggest democratic challenge for an art form that you have to ask the audience to be aware of the fact that they are just as responsible for the death of cinema as the people who make it."
The hour-long talk included more discussion of the trends towards binge-watching and watching movies online as well as Fukunaga's background and approach to preproduction, rehearsal and filming, including the technical aspects of the latter.??