French law requires movies shown in theaters in France to stay off streaming for 36 months. It's an absurd regulatory capture on par with us auto dealer requirements.
Wait wait...French law as in law by the French government? You get hit wit fines by the government if you defy it? Or an industry norm like "If you allow streaming within 36 months of a theatrical release we won't talk to you/union workers won't work for you/no awards for you"?
If it's an actual law, that sounds utterly absurd. Good on Netflix for not playing ball.
We have laws on the percentage of "foreign" music you are allowed to play on radio stations (to fight against the evil english language), laws that prevent TV channels from playing films on friday or saturday evening (to protect those poor cinemas), laws that govern the number of pharmacies by number of inhabitants and disallow ownership of multiple pharmacies or ownership by non-pharmacists (to protect them against the great evil that is competition)...
It sounds logical at first, but combined with the single-ownership rule, it's actually a clever way to protect the "mom&pop store" model. Which is good for the owners, but bad for the consumers - no economies of scale, no competition, no supermarkets... Like being back in the early 50s
That there should be a licensed pharmacist at all times in the store - fine. But why does the store have to belong to one? To take a stereotypically German example, we don't say that all garages have to be owned by mechanics :)
To be a bit more precise, the law on it self doesn't define the delays between different media releases, it only enforce those. Delays are defined by agreement between the different industry actors. I guess that the fact there's no big French streaming company make those delays quite unbalanced in favor of movies theatres and tv channels (that often produce movies released in theatres)
A film should only be shown in a theater to create a true cinematic experience. I don’t think the regulation is absurd at all. If Netflix makes films and shows them only within a TV format, than it’s a tv show.
The cinematic arts requires a cinema by definition.
A film requires an extremely large format display. Not a small high definition display. Ideally it'd be a large, high definition display.
How a film is displayed informs how the film is shot. The same would go for audio as well. How the audio is heard informs how the audio is mixed and mastered.
Not to be condescending, but it's really not hard to understand. People don't make films to be shown on a phone for instance. Or if they do make films to be shown on a phone, then it's not a film they'll be making.
The working definition of a "TV show" is a series with regular installments/showings overtime, or at least many shorter length shows. A "movie" is the opposite, with just one production film. This is flexible, of course, as a movie can have later installments, but it is not its primary purpose. There are many "movies" that never make it to the Cinemas because of bad production value, ie bad movies!
Your definition would call Netflix's recent film "Bright" a show, which of course it is not. Cannes is being ridiculous.
