I am a writer and I have mixed feelings about this.

I agree with Steven Spielberg that this truncates the cinematic experience. My own theory is that -- if we ever get theaters reopened which looks like a long range goal right now -- that they may necessarily return to an old school presentation where a movie of great scale becomes an event. The problem with mega multiplexes is that they gave all movies the same gravitas as actually great movies that truly required scale to be fully experienced. Say 'Private Ryan.'

I guarantee that a perfectly good independent like 'The Secret Life of a Wallflower' would have been better served by a smaller release than the overhyped release it got as a 'big screen' event. It was not. It was a very good movie that should have been released to art houses and gone to Netflix sooner than later to find its audience. It should not be distributed the same way as 'Black Panther.'

Netflix et al allows a lot of 'smaller' movies to find a home where the scale suits the narrative. It all allows high quality production and distribution for stories that are better episodically, in limited series.

I think these are varied experiences, and for the artist like myself it allows me to re evaluate how I want to tell a story. And writing for Netflix is a whole other art form: 'When They See Us' would have had to be so mangled in a movie format that it would have failed the story and network television would have edited the truth right out of it.

Ava DeVernay has found her medium on Netflix the way Steven Spielberg found his on the big screen.

I'm really hopeful that over the next few years, as we get to the other side of this period of the bizarre, all of these will shake out into separate platforms that allow for some really creative work that can only exist at its best on there particular platform.