Viggo Mortensen is pissed at Amazon "greed" after dumping his movie to streaming
"It comes down to greed," said Mortensen, who says Thirteen Lives director Ron Howard was too nice a guy to call out the company
Viggo Mortensen has long carved out a reputation for himself as an “independent” actor—and not in either of the ways we usually mean that, i.e., “Unemployed student filmmaker” or “Said some shit on social media and now works exclusively in faith-based entertainment.” Mortensen has just made it clear that, despite having ostensibly done his time in the franchise mines, he only acts when and if he feels like it, and when he feels like a project is worth building up some enthusiasm for.
Hence, presumably, the genuine vitriol the Lord Of The Rings actor fired toward Amazon in a new Vanity Fair interview this week, where he called out Jeff Bezos and his hordes for dumping Mortensen’s 2022 Ron Howard flick Thirteen Lives to streaming after just a week in limited release. “They have all their excuses for why they did that, but it comes down to greed,” Mortensen stated. “How much money do you need?”
The actor—who’s promoting his second directorial effort, The Dead Don’t Hurt—says that, after the Howard film (“One of his better movies,” in Mortensen’s estimation) tested super well back in 2022, MGM intended to give it a wide release. But then Amazon bought the studio, and, well:
I think Amazon could certainly have respected the deal, as they said they were going to, and released it widely in theaters and let it have its run. And then they could have also made money streaming. But they figured it would be more cost-effective—i.e., they would make more money—if they didn’t have to bother with spending money on promoting it and putting in theaters, and sharing that money with theaters, frankly. That’s what it comes down to. To me, it’s greed.
All told, it’s a pleasantly fiery interview—Mortensen also talks some serious shit about the reception that granted Green Book a few years back, and talked about his general feelings on genre or franchise work: “If somebody came to me with X movie, the third part or the ninth part, and I thought it was a great character and I wanted to play that character and I thought I had something to contribute, I’d do it. I’m not against it. But they’re not usually that good. I mean, to me, they’re not usually that well written. They’re kind of predictable. I mean, of course there’s always the issue of if I run out of money.”