This article is completely wrong as to the economics of the situation but it's worth having the discussion anyway.

So you aren't eligible for consideration for an Academy Award unless your film has had a theatrical release. That's just the rule. It's not likely to change any time soon because NATO (yeah, different NATO, yeah, I find that amusing) is not about to shoot themselves in the face and cease to exist the way Netflix would like them to. NATO posted $11b in revenue last year, though, while Netflix posted $16b so watch this space.

You can get around this "theatrical distribution" game by four-walling.. That's where you rent out a theater for just long enough to satisfy Academy requirements that yes, someone saw their movie. The Laemmle in Los Angeles is a classic example because you know those Academy-nominated short films? That nobody watches? You get on that list by four-walling your short film. It's pretty ridiculous. There's a couple weeks every year where you can pay like $9 to see a short film and nobody does. As a result, four-walling is held in extremely low regard. That's one reason Martin Scorcese doesn't want his DeNiro flick four-walled.

Another, of course, is box-office returns delineate secondary and tertiary market sales. That's broadcast, broadcast in secondary markets, in-flight movies, hotel pay-per-view, etc. Secondary and tertiary markets are usually two to three times as great as theatrical run and that's before we get into merchandising and product tie-ins. Ang Lee's hulk famously made its entire budget back in a single Burger King tie-in.

None of this matters to Netflix in the slightest, of course. They intend to show their content on Netflix. Forever. For a monthly membership price. Secondary and tertiary markets? There are zero.

Netflix, for their part, doesn't really care what you watch so long as you watch it on Netflix. It's like Youtube that way; Finger Family, unboxings, unreported furry porn, whatever, so long as they can serve advertising with it they give no fucks what they show you. Unfortunately for Netflix, what people like to watch on Netflix is shit Netflix didn't come up with.

All those red shows are going away.

In 2017, Netflix did 11b in revenue and owed $20b to production companies for future projects - contracts that hadn't been fulfilled but had been executed. In 2018 Netflix did 16b in revenue and owed $53b. They'll do anything to replace those red bars... except play by the rules that have dictated the game for the past hundred years.

Interesting times.