Kevin Spacey gives an impassioned plea in support of the Netflix model

House of Cards type TV Show network Netflix

According to Kevin Spacey, in the future there will be no differentiation between films and television.

In a speech at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, the Oscar-winning actor told the audience of television executives that it’s all just content to him and to consumers as well. Words like “film” and “television” are signifiers that are useful only to “agents, and managers, and lawyers who use these terms to conduct business deals,” he said. The people, he added, just want stories, and it’s their responsibility to give it to them.

Spacey thinks the consumer should be able to watch what they want, when they want to, and the success of his original Netflix series House of Cards proves it. He spoke out against the network model of requiring a pilot before ordering a series. Spacey went to Netflix, he says, because he and director David Fincher didn’t want to audition. “We wanted to start to tell a story that would take a long time to tell. We were creating a sophisticated, multi-layered story with complex characters who would reveal themselves over time, and relationships that would need space to play out,” he said.

Below is an edited version of Spacey’s speech. Check it out:

Do we need to revamp how we consume and produce television shows? Will labels like “film” and “television” fall by the wayside as the pre-established mediums shift and disperse? Is Netflix the future? Share your thoughts in the comments.