We used to be a proper country. By that I mean practically every home video release used to come with a slew of special features, often including full-length commentaries, detailed documentaries, and various behind the scenes insights into the way a movie was made. If an aspiring filmmaker only had access to the exhaustive bonus features on Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, they would still learn more about filmmaking than many schools could teach. But since that type of bonus content costs money to produce, studios are now frequently content with providing largely barebones versions of their home media, perhaps throwing a perfunctory video or two into the mix, but certainly not heaping the lavish bounty of yesteryear upon customers. Today’s streaming movies almost never have any special features at all.
Along comes Michael Mann to shake things up. He appears to be bypassing Neon, the distributor of “Ferrari,” and going direct to consumer with his own version of special features, which leads me to wonder if his contemporaries might take notice. Could filmmakers start working it into their contracts that they’ll have the ability to use aspects of their movies in similar fashion for their own individual websites? (Note that the Mann Archive pass does not grant users access to watch “Ferrari” in its entirety.) How much would you pay for an equivalent archive from your favorite director(s)? In an era in which physical media is not nearly as omnipresent in our culture as it used to be, has Mann tapped into a new revenue stream — one that could even help fund future movies?
This could end up being a one-off experiment that dies on the vine. But if Hollywood is paying attention, it might be the first step in a larger movement that redefines bonus content for your favorite films and helps enrich the creators of those projects instead of the studios that distributed them.
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