The Irishman is not the only film to have broken the 90-day rule. The trend has also spread to Australia, where the only cinemas to be showing the film will be “independent” chains such as Dendy and Classic cinemas – companies that have a stronger market in niche fare than major multiplexes like Village and Hoyts. The Irishman is reported to have opened in only eight cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. Other major cinema chains in the UK and Europe followed suit. But negotiations between the Netflix/Scorsese team and two major US cinema chains, AMC Theatres and Cineplex, fell apart earlier this year when Netflix reportedly wanted that window closed to 45 days at most.
Traditionally, cinemas have demanded a 90-day window between theatrical release and on-demand availability, essentially giving them the first exclusive bite of the revenue pie. But when it came time to broker a deal with distributors for theatrical release, parties couldn’t agree. The director wrote in the New York Times earlier this week that Netflix “alone allowed us to make The Irishman the way we needed to”.
The $159m film and passion project for Scorsese was financed by Netflix after years of languishing in development. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a crime drama starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, is not the first likely blockbuster to bypass wide theatrical release before heading to the binge-box of home entertainment, but it is perhaps the most notable – and it’s sparked a coordinated response from cinema operators internationally, who see the rise of the streaming giants as an existential threat. I f there was ever a sign that cinema-going was becoming a niche experience, it must be that a major feature directed by one of the godfathers of modern film will grace only a handful of big screens around the world.