Willem Dafoe laments that 'more challenging movies' don't fare as well on streaming

Willem Dafoe is missing the good ole days.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the Poor Things star reflected on the current state of cinema and lamented that "more difficult movies, more challenging movies" don't fare as well on streaming services than in theaters. The reason, he said, is that "the kind of attention that people give at home isn't the same."

"I miss the social thing of where movies fit in the world," Dafoe, 68, mused. "You go see a movie, you go out to dinner, you talk about it later, and that spreads out. People now go home, they say, 'Hey, honey, let's watch something stupid tonight,' and they flip through and they watch five minutes of 10 movies, and they say, forget it, let's go to bed. Where's that discourse found?”

Dafoe also groused that studios "aren't making movies the same way they used to. They're being financed by toy companies and other entities, and they become the vehicle to make the movies, because they know how to do that. Streaming, they're becoming like a monopoly, they have the means of production and distribution. And so it's very complicated."

The actor insisted that he's a "lousy source" to "have a really good overview on what has changed" in the movie landscape. But, he said, "I just noticed that there's been a proliferation of middlemen. There aren't ballsy producers like there used to be. There are some savvy ones, but you don't have the same kind of characters that you used to have, that would sell their house to make a movie, and do crazy things to get it done. They're a little harder to find."

Dafoe can currently be seen in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things, which nabbed two wins (Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Musical or Comedy for star Emma Stone) at Sunday's Golden Globes. His upcoming screen projects include Beetlejuice 2 and Nosferatu, the latter of which reunites him with The Lighthouse and The Northman director Robert Eggers.

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