Netflix is shooting for Oscar glory with its latest epic gangster film from Martin Scorsese, but Hollywood is not making it easy for this disruptive startup to take a place in the modern ecosystem of film distribution.
Sitting in the heart of Manhattan is the iconic Belasco Theatre. Over a century old, this truly legendary Broadway venue has been influencing popular culture for decades, from introducing the world to Marlon Brando in the 1940s to bringing modern classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch into mainstream Broadway circles in 2014. From November, for the first time in the Belasco’s history, the theater will become a movie house, screening Martin Scorsese’s latest gangster epic The Irishman. Netflix, the film’s producer, has hired the entire theater for one month, and will retrofit it into a cinema. The film will be scheduled to screen using a classic Broadway performance model - one evening session per day, with additional matinees on weekends.
