In the future, after Hollywood’s movie palaces have been reclaimed by the Mojave desert sands and the once-grand Odeons and Empires are nothing but squats for pigeons, the last cinemas standing will all be in Pyongyang, Beijing and Shanghai. Why? Because, along with Crimea and Syria, North Korea and China are the only places left in the world where you still can’t get Netflix.

Streaming sites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Mubi represent such a grave threat to cinema that even Nato has waded in — albeit the National Association of Theatre Owners, not the other Nato. Last October, the industry body condemned Netflix’s decision to bypass the long-established “theatrical window” by releasing its war thriller The Siege of Jadotville, starring Jamie Dornan, online the same day it premiered in a handful of US cinemas. The theatrical release ensured that the film was eligible for awards, while the digital release furthered Netflix’s only real commercial interest: establishing and asserting dominance of this new distribution model.

To put it in terms we can all appreciate, Netflix et al are crashing about, laying waste to the film industry landscape, like 50ft Decepticons in a Transformers sequel. Naturally, Netflix sees itself more like Kirk Douglas rising up against his Roman slavers in Spartacus, or Mel Gibson on horseback bellowing “FREEEEDOM!”, and there are plenty of reasons for film fans to paint their faces blue and follow the streaming giants into battle. Falling box office revenue is evidence that the comfy convenience of home-viewing is not to be underestimated and, according to Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, those who are holding out and still prefer the cinema experience need to shake their “romantic notion” about the big screen. “We have to get rid of the romantic part,” he said in 2016. “I think over time that these films will get booked into theatres at the same time they’re on Netflix.”

For film-makers, too, the new way of doing things has its appeal. Netflix’s refusal to disclose viewing figures promises to liberate creative minds from box-office anxiety, while its deep pockets take the pressure off production budgets. This, along with its acquisition of trickier-to-market titles, such as the child soldier drama Beasts of No Nation or Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, may create the impression that Netflix is as serious about disrupting the risk-averse, profit-led culture of film production as it is about disrupting the distribution model.

Netflix poses no mortal threat to cinemas | Letter from UK Cinema Association Read more

If only. Instead, these chippy upstarts seem determined to rival the cigar-chomping moguls of old by replicating their business strategy, movie for movie. Yes, there are auteur-helmed prestige projects (Woody Allen at Amazon, Martin Scorsese at Netflix), but they put out their fair share of (supposedly) crowd-pleasing crud, too. Netflix’s upcoming slate includes Will Smith vehicle, Bright, a sci-fi-fantasy that reteams the director and star of Warner Bros’s critical flop Suicide Squad – and every comedy Adam Sandler makes between now and Judgement Day. The appointment of Universal Pictures executive Scott Stuber to head up the film arm only underscores this traditional approach. Plus, the more they spend on these “originals”, the less is left over to support the true originals.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation, one of the trickier-to-market films acquired by Netflix. Photograph: Netflix

This was always the plan, of course. There is a reason, says Sarandos, that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings didn’t call his 90s mail order startup DVDmail or Mailflix: “The eventuality was all about the content, that every piece of film entertainment would come into the home by the internet.”

In TV, a medium intended for the home, streaming has resulted in quality, commercially competitive series that might never otherwise have found an audience, the likes of Orange is the New Black, Master of None. But in specifying the mode of exhibition, cinema is different. Have you really seen a film such as Moonlight if you watched the first 53 minutes on your Samsung Galaxy?

So far, the standard industry response to this threat has been to make more films of scale: more disaster movies, more monster movies, more epic space operas and very little of anything else. They would do better to remind audiences that spectacle isn’t all cinema can do. It isn’t even the most exciting thing.

In the age of smartphones and shortened attention spans, cinema’s power of total immersion is more transcendent than ever, and more precious. Where once we filmgoers were a congregation exalted in collective screen worship, now we are mostly lonely sinners, pleasure-seeking in gloomy privacy. If that sounds like a grand, fanciful or “romantic notion” of the simple economics of digital distribution, good. That is the whole point of cinema, isn’t it? To liven up ordinary lives with a sprinkling of movie magic, at least until the lights go up.