Martin Scorsese has a new film coming out and I want to see it. You want to see it. Everyone and their mother wants to see it. But seeing it won’t be as easy as catching The Wolf of Wall Street, Casino or even Silence.
After months of debate, discussion and negotiations, Netflix has finally revealed a release schedule for Scorsese’s The Irishman. The film has always been set to be a Netflix film but Scorsese and Netflix have been battling to get the movie into theaters too, partly because it’ll likely be a box office smash and partly because they are angling the movie as a major awards contender. But theater chains have been very hesitant to screening The Irishman like it has other Scorsese movies. Theater companies do NOT like Netflix’s model of debuting movies on their streaming service the same day that they hit theaters. During negotiations we wrote how a couple of chains wanted to screen the movie for three whole months before Netflix begins streaming it. That obviously wasn’t going to fly with Netflix, that would disrupt their whole model. So what was going to happen?
It turns out THIS is going to happen: The Irishman will play in theaters but it won’t be that many. Deadline reports that the film will hit theaters in LA and New York on November 1st, followed by an expansion to more theaters every weekend after until it starts streaming on Netflix on November 27th. The theater count isn’t known but it will NOT be playing in AMC, Cineplex, Regal or Cinemark theaters because Netflix and those chains just couldn’t come to an agreement. Simply put: this will not be a major release.
Netflix tried to find common ground with these companies but it just didn’t work out because the theaters refused to have the movie play for such a short time before it hit Netflix. Netflix, on the other hand, couldn’t agree to changing the way they do things. They were wiling to budge a bit, giving the chains three weeks of exclusivity but they didn’t want to give them months. And so now The Irishman will have a release similar to Roma or other independent films. That’s not the worst fate for the movie but it’s a bummer for people in smaller markets who rely on AMC, Regal and other big names to see movies on the silver screen. Of course, they can just wait until Netflix but it’s always nice to see a new Scorsese flick on the big screen.