Why Amazon’s A-List Stars Are Increasingly Giving its Film Studio Bad Reviews

Nicolas Cage is an actor who knows how lucky he is to have a mainstream career. After a series of bizarre allegations against him, mostly concerned with his financial profligacy, he seemed to be stuck making awful straight-to-streaming rubbish.It has only been in the last few years that he has been able, once again, to take the roles that an Oscar-winning actor of his caliber deserves. These have included the lead in Amazon Prime’s noir thriller “Spider-Noir,” which gave the actor a showcase of a kind that he has not had for years.Although the series did not cross over in the way that its showrunners — and presumably the studio — hoped for, the first series still attracted good reviews for Mr. Cage, which is why his recent anti-Amazon comments appeared to be a classic example of biting the hand that feeds.But there will not be a second series of ‘Spider-Noir.’ Following news of its cancellation, Mr. Cage remarked earlier in the month at the New York Comic Con that “Amazon is a very AI-friendly company, to the tune of $50 billion invested in OpenAI. I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it’s like, connect those dots! I’m not a member of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to let them use AI on ‘Spider-Noir.’” He concluded, with the air of a man who has known triumph and disaster, “I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that’s okay.”Nicolas Cage will be fine. He has the lead in the fifth series of “True Detective” and David O. Russell’s football biopic “Madden” — ironically, given his recent comments, another Amazon Prime release — to look forward to, along with the kudos that has come from being the lead in a critically acclaimed show. Yet his comments have contributed to a growing sense, both within and outside of the industry, that Amazon has struggled to connect with viewers in a way that, say, Apple and Netflix have not, and that the streaming service has proved largely indifferent, if not actively hostile, to talent in a way that leads some of its bigger names, including Mr. Cage, to make public statements that, in other circumstances, would be career-threatening if not actively career-ending.However, he is in good company when it comes to other A-listers who have littlepositive to say about Amazon. The actor-director Jonah Hill said in 2020 of hisperformance in “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” that “It’s the best acting I have done or will ever do, but no one saw it because Amazon completely f****d it up.” Although Hill did not go into further details, the film, which premiered to considerable acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, was purchased by Amazon and had a largely token release later that year, grossing a mere $4.2 million at the box office.Jonah Hill in ‘Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot.’ Wikimedia CommonsAnd, on the TV side, there have been messy controversies, such as the one involving the actor Jeffrey Tambor, who was messily fired from the show “Transparent” over allegations — which he has denied — of sexual harassment. Like Kevin Spacey in “House of Cards,” it became unpleasantly clear that without its lead, the show was far less than the sum of its parts, and its subsequent decline in standing is not purely linked to a culture war controversy around the casting of Tambor as a trans woman.Amazon also has poor form with some of its bread-and-butter streaming shows. The actor Troy Evans, who starred in the “Bosch” franchise, made his feelings on the world’s biggest retailer clear last year when, informed that “Bosch: Legacy” had been cancelled, leaving the seventh series to emerge into the world with a relative lack of publicity, he wrote the words “F*** Amazon” on Facebook, thereby ironically using one mega-corporation to attack another.One of the biggest problems facing Amazon Prime is that very few people know what their content stands for. Take James Bond. While it spent an astronomical amount of money to acquire the rights to the 007 series, arguments and controversies, notably revolving around the previous keepers of the flame, Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, have meant that this particular IP has been largely under-exploited to date. Two-and-a-half years after Amazon bought MGM, Bond’s studio, for $8.45 billion, Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson ceded creative control of the Bond films, though they remain co-owners of the franchise through a joint venture with the studio. Well-placed sources say the pair had fully intended to retain control of the lucrative spy franchise, including choosing Daniel Craig’s successor as Bond, but grew tired of their new streaming owner’s unconventional approach to filmmaking.It seems as if the Denis Villeneuve-directed, Stephen Knight-written Bond film, which may be released in 2028, is likely to be a box office hit if it’s any good. But then the question arises as to whether it is time to begin making a slew of spin-off shows: One can only imagine a young Miss Moneypenny, a Blofeld origin story et al.Yet, amusingly, the only concrete thing that Amazon have for its 007 money so far is the Brian Cox-fronted game show “007: Road to a Million,” complete with a star who admitted that, “So I said, ‘Oh, finally they’re getting me in aJames Bond movie. I thought, ‘Yes, of course!’” Mr. Cox later learned “there was no script and there was no James Bond movie.”Brian Cox at the ‘007: Road To A Million’ Premiere at Battersea Power station on November 02 2023 in London, England. Via Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesMoney, as usual, cushioned the blow, but Bond is still very much a wait-and-see situation. Which is more than can be said for Amazon’s other big-ticket purchase, “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which is said to be costing at least a billion over its projected five-season run, and which continues even though, for now, nobody seems to be enjoying its wearying, CGI-heavy examination of Tolkien apocrypha a very great deal.Even as we await the arrival of its third season next month, the general indifference that it has been greeted with was best expressed when the star of the original films, Elijah Wood, simply tweeted a facepalm emoji when the hugely expensive and hyped series was announced.It is not hard to believe that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is said to be a great fan of Tolkien and Bond, simply announced that he wanted his two favorite literary franchises to become part of the Amazon empire, and, thanks to his limitless bank account, such a thing was distinctly possible. What was not, however, was ensuring that people wanted to watch what he produced, nor that the actors involved would not have their own opinions. Mr. Cage also touched on another sensitive subject, namely the involvement of AI in the company’s shows. Amazon famously ditched Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial,” a biopic of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that it had funded, starring Andrew Garfield as Altman, after thecompany signed a $50 billion deal with OpenAI in February this year.While an Amazon spokesperson said, apparently without shame, that “We believe that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home,” it was rumored that the primary reason for the film being offloaded onto its eventual distributor, the much smaller Neon, was to avoid offending either Altman or, by extension, his good friend Mr. Bezos.Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman in ‘Artificial.’ NeonEither way, attendees of the picture’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival raised their eyebrows at the presence of Amazon executives at the event, even though they had recently washed their hands of all things “Artificial.” It was as though, having thrown the film under the bus, they still wanted the film to carry them into the awards race.It may be that Amazon is rubbing their hands together at the prospect of AI-powered franchises, and that they will be — as in so many things — ahead of the curve. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine a resurrected Sean Connery returning as 007, for instance, or for great icons from the Golden Age of Hollywood — Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and the rest — to be brought back opposite one another. But what seems both depressing and inevitable is that, of all the streaming services, it seems the one that is most interested in technology and the least interested in actors. So it seems inevitable that there will, inevitably, be more figures like Messrs. Cage, Hill, Evans, and the rest who are prepared tobreak ranks and say, literally or figuratively, ‘F*** Amazon.’ Whether or not this has any effect on Mr. Bezos’s behemoth remains to be seen. Somehow, I doubt it will.

Why Amazon’s A-List Stars Are Increasingly Giving its Film Studio Bad Reviews

Why Amazon’s A-List Stars Are Increasingly Giving its Film Studio Bad Reviews

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