Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are raising eyebrows over how Netflix is reshaping the film industry. Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience episode #2440, the longtime collaborators described how the streaming giant’s model is rewriting the rules of storytelling, encouraging filmmakers to cater to a distracted, screen-hopping audience glued to phones and laptops instead of the big screen.
According to Damon, that distraction now directly shapes the scripts themselves. “To keep them tuned in, you re-iterate the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching,” he said. What once depended on careful pacing and visual language has turned into what amounts to engagement engineering, where movies are designed around data, not drama.
Joe Rogan Experience #2440 - Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
Affleck and Damon explained that Netflix analytics drive creative decisions as much as talent does. “We’ve got data that shows within the first five minutes when this happens, they tune out,” Joe Rogan said during the interview. The result is clear: filmmakers now front-load major action sequences or emotional hooks within minutes of the opening credits just to keep audiences from clicking away. That approach marks a dramatic shift from traditional theatrical pacing, where tension once built slowly and deliberately toward a powerful climax.
Affleck said this reality even changes how films are shot. Because many people now watch movies on small screens, visual grandeur and cinematic scale no longer carry the same weight. “The bar for walking out of a movie theater is a lot higher than from just changing the channel,” he said, adding that a film like Taxi Driver once held audiences captive through discomfort—something streaming can’t replicate. Damon agreed, pointing out that “if somebody’s disturbed at home, they just change the channel.”
Yet Netflix’s influence doesn’t stop with storytelling—it extends to how creators get paid. Affleck described how the company structures its deals around viewership-based bonuses instead of traditional box-office revenue, lowering financial risks and opening the door to more original or experimental projects. This approach, he noted, contrasts with old-school studio contracts tied to unpredictable theater performance and marketing costs.
That difference matters most for independents. Damon and Affleck acknowledged that platforms like Netflix have given new life to mid-budget and indie productions that would otherwise struggle to survive the theater system. “A $25 million movie has to make $100 million just to break even,” Damon observed, pointing to steep box-office splits and massive marketing budgets that crush smaller films. With streaming, those projects can find an audience without gambling their future on ticket sales. COVID, they added, only sped up this transition to at-home viewing—one that now seems permanent.
Still, the question lingers: at what cost? If cinema becomes another data-driven content stream, what happens to storytelling itself? Affleck tried to strike a hopeful note, insisting that not every shift is fatal. “Everything that comes along isn’t going to destroy everything,” he said. “What you can do is make the best you can make it. Really good.”
The full conversation runs over two hours and aired January 16, 2026. It’s worth your time and is a rare look behind the curtain, two Hollywood veterans reflecting on whether the age of Netflix marks cinema’s rebirth or its slow dismantling. I’m betting it’s the latter.
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English (US) · 