James Cameron Blasts Netflix, Says Oscars Mean Nothing Without Theatrical Releases

James Cameron has thoughts. And yes, they involve movie theaters. On a new podcast appearance, the Titanic and Avatar director took a pretty sharp swing at Netflix and its awards strategy, and he did not mince words.

Where this started

Cameron dropped by The Ringer's podcast The Town with Matthew Belloni and, right out of the gate, called the idea of Netflix potentially buying Warner Bros. a 'disaster.' From there, he zeroed in on how the streamer handles theatrical releases for awards season.

'We will put the movie out for a week, we will put it out for 10 days; we will qualify for Academy Awards consideration. See, I think that is fundamentally rotten at the core. The Academy Awards, to me, mean nothing if they do not mean theatrical.'

What the rules actually say

Quick refresher: the Oscars do still require a theatrical run. The Academy has a lot of fine print, but the broad strokes are pretty straightforward:

• A film has to play in a commercial movie theater for at least seven days in a row, with at least three showings per day, all in the same theater.
• If your movie first premieres anywhere that is not a theatrical release — say, on a streaming platform — it is not eligible for Oscars in any category.

Netflix has long threaded that needle by giving its big contenders limited theatrical runs before they hit the service. Think The Irishman, and projects in that lane like Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein — the strategy is to check the eligibility boxes without committing to a wide, lengthy theatrical rollout.

Cameron vs. the minimum

Cameron is not a fan of that approach — especially when he sees it as Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos doing the bare minimum to qualify. His fix is pretty blunt: make streamers put some real skin in the game.

In his words, they should only compete if the movie gets a meaningful theatrical push: 2,000 theaters for a month. That is a far cry from a one-week token engagement in a handful of cities.

Where his own movies land

None of this will be a problem for Cameron's next one. Avatar: Fire and Ash — the third trip to Pandora, introducing the Ash People — is built for the big screen and will not be hiding in limited release. The first two Avatar films each cleared $2 billion worldwide, so odds are this threequel is going to be one of 2025's heavy hitters when it opens on December 19.