Los Angeles (AFP)

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve fired on Thursday on the decision of Warner Bros. studios to broadcast all their films next year simultaneously on video on demand and in theaters to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic.

For the director of "Dune", a new adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel, Warner Bros' choice to put his film on its HBO Max platform as soon as it hits theaters means that it "won't have the chance to have the performance necessary to be profitable and that piracy will eventually win ".

"Warner Bros. could well have killed the + Dune + franchise" and threatens cinema in general, he loses his temper in a column published Thursday evening by the specialist site Variety, the latest in a long list of indignant Hollywood reactions to this iconoclastic decision.

In early December, Warner Bros. announced that all of its films slated for 2021, including the highly anticipated "Matrix 4" and "Dune," would air on HBO Max alongside theaters, shaking up industry codes and practices to compensate declining revenues.

This strategy should only apply immediately to the United States, the HBO Max service not being available at this stage in other countries, where the Warner Bros. catalog will normally be released in theaters. next year.

Launched last May, HBO Max is expected to be rolled out to select countries in Latin America and Europe in the second half of 2021.

The studios, belonging to the telecommunications group AT&T, show "absolutely no love of cinema or for the public", accuses the director.

"It is only a question of the survival of the telecoms giant, which currently carries a colossal debt of more than 150 billion dollars".

“Streaming on its own cannot keep the film industry alive as we knew it before the Covid. Streaming can produce very good content, but not films of the scale and ambition of + Dune + ", assures Denis Villeneuve, stressing having devoted more than three years of efforts to it.

"Dune", with Timothée Chalamet in the role of the hero Paul Atréides, was to be the high point of the 2020 film season but its release, initially scheduled for November, has already been postponed twice due to the health crisis which caused the closure of many cinemas.

"The safety of the public comes first, nobody questions that (...) The plan was that + Dune + would be released in theaters in October 2021, when the vaccinations were well advanced", explains Denis Villeneuve, who "firmly believes that the future of cinema is on the big screen, no matter what Wall Street fans say. "

"When the pandemic is over, cinemas will be full again (...) Not because the film industry needs it but because we humans need cinema as a collective experience", he asserts.

© 2020 AFP