Leonardo DiCaprio is not optimistic about the future of motion pictures, blaming Hollywood’s corporate studio system for sending filmmakers clamouring to streaming services and resulting in fewer people watching movies in cinemas as studios increasingly churn out “garbage.”
“I don’t want to act as if I’ve been around since f**king silent cinema, but I see this as a huge shift in the way movies are going to get done, what gets financing,” DiCaprio, 44, in a recent interview with Esquire in which he, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” co-star Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino discuss the new film.
“The studio system has tons of content, libraries of things that they can make movies of, but in a lot of ways they are hemorrhaging. They’ve become — much like in the twenties — these corporate empires that have taken over the artistic vein of moviemaking,” he explains.
“We’re now in an era when there’s a flush of cash into streaming. But with an overflow of content, there’s a lot of garbage out there. Now I do see a lot of chances being taken for story lines, certainly documentaries, certainly giving some artists opportunities to make out-of-the-box story lines that I don’t think 10 years ago would have been possible. But these types of films that Quentin is doing are also becoming endangered species,” he adds.
“I’m not saying celebrate this movie,” he says of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, “but let’s celebrate filmmakers who are still holding on to the craft of making movies, and let’s hope that in that transition into whatever this is going to be, this type of filmmaking will still exist. There are some dark ages coming up.”
