Channing Tatum Fears the Loss of Storytelling in the Streaming Wars


Actor Channing Tatum has voiced concerns regarding the current state of filmmaking. Like the Writers Guild of America, whose strike has entered its fourth week having begun on May 2, the actor fears that streaming services have negatively impacted the entertainment landscape, expressing concerns that studios are more occupied with treating content as product than as art.


Speaking in an interview with Forbes, Tatum spoke out against streaming platforms, noting a decline in the quality of new content. “The movie industry is just changing so much,” the actor said. “It’s a different era now and it’s just getting crazier with the streamers. I do fear a little for the storytelling of it all. I think there will be less good storytelling and a lot more product out there.” While it seems only recently that we were living through a new golden age of television, lead by prestige titles on streamers such as Netflix, industry realities have quickly begun to sour the perception of streaming services and their impact on the entertainment landscape. Tatum’s comments of course echo the concerns of the striking WGA; while more money is allotted to things such as marketing as Tatum notes, studios notably refuse to adapt to the landscape created by streaming and pay writers fairly for their work. Such disregard for the art of storytelling is only echoed further by current fears surrounding the use of AI in Hollywood.

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Tatum went on to argue that content is no longer made because a story demands it, but because studios have confidence in a project’s lucrativeness. Recalling his experience working on the sequel to Magic Mike back in 2015, he continued, “We made Magic Mike 2 for $12 million dollars and they spent $60-$70 million dollars to sell it. So, we’re spending exponentially more money to sell a movie than actually make the thing for you. That should be the other way around. We could be spending the money on the thing that the viewer is actually going to get to see and now it’s just who can create the most noise to break through the cataclysmic wave of content coming out every single day.”

Channing Tatum in Bullet Train
Image via Sony

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Tatum is Focused on Storytelling

As Tatum moves further into filmmaking himself, spearheading a remake of the 1990 classic Ghost, the actor is eager to see the industry change, saying, “It’s just a learning process every day. We have the writer strike right now. We’re probably going to have the actor and director strikes, maybe. Things will always be changing and that is the only thing that is constant.” Tatum confirmed a focus on storytelling was at the heart of his upcoming Ghost remake, saying the project “is really getting somewhere we can really be proud of and really want to go make.”

You can watch our previous interview with Tatum down below.



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