The fashionable notion that television is better than ever and that cinema or film is battling in vain to maintain relevance is, depending on where you sit, either a potent truth or a spectacularly tedious kernel of received nonwisdom. The fact that popular streaming video services are now investing hefty sums in the creation of content in formats that fit comfortably into commonly accepted notions of TV (varied series in half-hour and full-hour episodes) and motion pictures (self-contained features averaging two hours) puts a new spin on the debate.

Streaming services operate outside the constraints of both network and cable television, and that theoretically allows more creatively risky material. Some have even heralded a blossoming of “auteur-driven” television. Woody Allen went on at great length earlier this year about how flummoxed he was by Amazon’s pursuit of him. Once worn down by the company’s escalating offers of autonomy and, one assumes, money, he delivered a comedy series “Crisis in Six Scenes” that functioned as the equivalent of a not-unamusing three-hour Woody Allen movie.

For Mr. Allen — a niche-mainstream filmmaker who makes modestly budgeted movies that don’t lose money as a rule, but are not blockbusters — the Amazon series can be seen as a form of brand extension. For other movie comedians, taking original content to streaming video is more like brand preservation. As their box-office revenues trail downward, they pursue their audience to the place they believe that audience is staying. Hence, “True Memoirs of an International Assassin,” a Netflix original movie starring Kevin James that had its premiere on that streaming service this month. It was nearly eight years ago that “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” rocked Hollywood by grossing almost $150 million in the United States. Mr. James, whose television series “The King of Queens” established his good-hearted, working-class guy with a mildly smart-mouth persona, was possibly a movie star. Or not. Movies in which he was billed below the bigger star Adam Sandler did well, but by 2015 the inevitable Blart sequel could muster only half the take of the first movie.

The risk-reward math of a Netflix original is less daunting than that of a theatrical feature. “Assassin,” directed by Jeff Wadlow from a script by Jeff Morris, using themes borrowed from Mr. Allen’s ’70s comedy “Bananas” and the meta-comedy “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” begins with some mildly clever evocations of writer’s block. Mr. James’s character, Joe, dreams of being an author and spends his lonesome home time writing a geopolitical thriller with a stand-in for himself engaging in all manner of weaponized derring-do. (There’s a “Walter Mitty” element at work here, too.) During moments when Mr. James’s character is stuck, Mr. Wadlow shows Joe’s double and various villains sitting around their set, awaiting authorial direction.