The entire concept of a streaming service is to offer a buffet of viewing options to subscribers that covers every storytelling avenue across almost all genres, but there’s always a risk of quantity outstripping quality. After all, how often have you sat there for an eternity trying to find something worthwhile to watch, only to end up revisiting something you’ve already seen? Channing Tatum understands your plight, and he doesn’t sound too thrilled about it.
While the actor hasn’t dipped his toes into the water of on-demand exclusivity anywhere near as much as many of his contemporaries, he’s still an actor, producer, and filmmaker with his finger on the pulse of the industry. As a result, he brought up the Magic Mike sequels in an interview with Forbes as an example of what can happen when there’s simply too much money being thrown around.
“The movie industry is just changing so much. It’s a different era now and it’s just getting crazier with the streamers. I do fear a little for the storytelling of it all. I think there will be less good storytelling and a lot more product out there. We made Magic Mike 2 for $12 million dollars and they spent $60-$70 million dollars to sell it.
So, we’re spending exponentially more money to sell a movie than actually make the thing for you. That should be the other way around. We could be spending the money on the thing that the viewer is actually going to get to see and now it’s just who can create the most noise to break through the cataclysmic wave of content coming out every single day.”
Netflix is no stranger to splurging exorbitant amounts of cash on movies and TV shows that end up being hot topics of conversation and appointment viewing for a week or two, only to then fall into abyss of cultural relevancy. Did we have Channing Tatum on the bingo card for outlining the perils faced by the “cataclysmic wave of content” streamers have enabled, though? No, but you can’t say he hasn’t hit the nail squarely on the head.
