Finn Wolfhard‘s career has been spent simultaneously inhabiting the last decade of cinema and this one. He burst onto the international scene as a star of Stranger Things, one of the most successful streaming originals of the 2010s, but simultaneously began establishing a career in traditional theatrical films, one that stems from a clear appreciation for the cinema of yesterday.
Now, as the industry faces the implications of a streaming era, Wolfhard is speaking out about what could be lost in the process.
As the actor said in a recent interview with Esquire, the present state of the industry is a turning point rather than an endpoint. Wolfhard dismissed the notion that “Streaming is amazing, and streaming should be able to have a place, but it shouldn’t be killing theaters.” For Wolfhard, the demise of the industry is less about the money but more about the impact it could have on society, since it is one of the last few communal activities.
A transitional industry facing the potential displacement of its center
The reasons for Wolfhard’s trepidation have to do with the consolidation taking place in Hollywood. As Stranger Things ends its mark after a decade, he has spoken about the wider implications of streaming services aggregating power. “We’re at a huge transitional period for the industry. Stranger Things is ending, and Netflix is about to buy Warner Bros., and I don’t know what that’s going to look like. Consolidating and trying to have a monopoly on film is not going to work.”
In relating the proposed change to the actual results of such a merger, Wolfhard went as far as to say that consolidating and trying to have a monopoly on film is not going to work. A healthy industry requires many ecosystems.
At the forefront of his argument is the experience of going to the theater. Wolfhard has described the act of going to the movies as something that reminds you you’re not alone, something shared between strangers where they respond, laugh, and share their emotions side by side, all as part of the collective experience of going to the same movie. This, he says, is not what happens when you watch it in the comfort of your own home.
That being said, Wolfhard was also cautious not to entirely knock the idea of streaming. This was in light of the creative freedoms and possibilities it presents and the fact that it could sustain projects that would never work in the box office model. Wolfhard’s take on the matter isn’t against streaming, but against the erasure it creates. As Hollywood looks ahead into this uncertain future, the voice of Wolfhard expresses a concern that is increasingly characteristic of his generation: that the price of convenience must not be community and that the enchantment of the darkened theater is an institution deserving of preservation.
