The Irishman has Netflix and Theaters at Odds

Legendary director Martin Scorsese has reunited with his dream team, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci (along with Al Pacino), to star in a new Mafia epic The Irishman. This marks the first time since 1995’s Casino that these legendary pillars in the film industry have gotten together to make a movie. Netflix seems to have the rights to this great reunion, but it seems it might have an uphill battle keeping those exclusive rights as national theater chains, AMC and Cineplex.

Negotiations between Netflix and the theatre chains have been ongoing, according to the New York Times. The theaters have been insistent that the movie plays for three months before being able to stream online citing the Oscar-winning movie Roma as a prime example of why they want to keep The Irishman in theaters as long as possible.  With Theaters declining popularity, the leaders of the popular chains are going to try everything they can to keep relevant with new big releases. The theatres, however, seems to have an uphill battle ahead of them since the streaming Juggernaut offers a significant price drop and is the one that Scorsese originally made the deal with for the $159 million movie. It appears theatres would have very little leverage in the negotiations since, if they don’t go the way that Netflix wants, the platform would just stream the movie itself anyway.

A three-month theatrical release could help Netflix in the long run by providing interest in the streaming service again and gaining more subscribers. Netflix recently took a loss in the stock market lately because of subscriber loss, so anything could help. The Irishman premieres September 27th for the New York film festival and will possibly drop on Netflix the same day unless a deal could be struck.

Are you excited for the latest movie from the mind of Martin Scorsese? Are you excited for the reunion of this team? Will you see it in theaters or just wait until Netflix streams it? Sound off in the comments!