For quite a while now, Outposters have frequently talked about their attachment to physical media in various Disqus debates down below. They point to everything from the sudden withdrawal of a title from a platform, to the advent of special editions, and even content edited at the hands of sensitivity readers.
If you own a physical copy, then it takes a home robbery to take it off you.
Now former Netflix favorite Mike Flanagan has been openly critical of the streamer and their mindset when it comes to physical releases. Flanagan was behind titles such as Hush, Gerald’s Game, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix.
Now, as reported by Dark Horizons, Flanagan has had a few things to say about his former home. On his Tumblr channel, he was asked by a fan about accessing his work directly via physical media, without a Netflix subscription.
Now that he has left Netflix, he clearly felt more free to answer quite bluntly:
“I tried very hard to get them to release my work on Blu-Ray & DVD. Netflix refused at every turn. It became clear very fast that their only priority was subs, and that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media.
While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles, or had partnerships who still valued physical media, and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like Stranger Things, that wasn’t at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model.
This is a very dangerous point of view. While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage.
So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing enormous harm to the very concept of film preservation. The danger comes when a title is only available on one platform, and then – for whatever reason – is removed.”
Flanagan recently regained the rights to his 2016 Netflix home invasion movie Hush, and is planning a physical media release of this.
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