Taking Netflix to the Cinema: National Cinema Value Chain Disruptions in the Age of Streaming

Abstract

This article explores how international over-the-top services impact the national feature film value chain in Canada and Australia. The main objective of this exploration is to interrogate the tendency to classify Netflix as television—whether in the context of broadcasting policy or in light of disciplinary biases that tend to separate media industry studies from the more cinephilic text-focused approaches of film studies. By equating entertainment services like Netflix with television, the discussion of how feature films will sustain themselves in a rapidly changing market becomes sidelined. Examining examples from Canada and Australia, we seek to draw attention to the ways in which film sustains and develops its industry and how services like Netflix relate to policy mechanisms designed to foster national cinema. This article offers an intervention into the developing discourse around Netflix as television to ask the question: what does it mean to consider Netflix as cinema?