Joel Coen Has “Mixed Feelings” on ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Releasing on Apple TV+ Just 3 Weeks After Opening In Theaters

The world premiere of Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth will open the 59th New York Film Festival on Friday evening, marking the second year in a row that the in-person festival opened with a film that would later release to the public on streaming. (In 2020, the entire festival was virtual, but in 2019 Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was the opener, and later released on Netflix.) While most have accepted that streamers have come out on top in the streaming-vs-theatrical debate—especially after a year of stalled and hybrid releases during the pandemic—is just another sign of ways the film world is embracing streaming.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, which is a joint production between A24 and Apple TV+, is expected to have a 3-week theatrical run beginning on December 25 before streaming on Apple TV+ on January 14, 2022, free to all subscribers. At a press conference following the screening of Macbeth on Friday morning, Decider asked Coen what he felt the advantages and disadvantages were when it came to releasing his films on streaming. The filmmaker replied that he had, “mixed feelings.”

“As a filmmaker, you want an audience to see your movies on the best, most sophisticated, and biggest platform possible. That’s why you spend all this time tweaking every little detail,” Coen told Decider. “One of the nightmares I think any filmmaker has is someone says, ‘I saw your movie on an airplane.’”

But, Coen went on to say, he also thinks streaming services can offer a platform for “risker” movies.

“Here’s the thing about streaming services, from a personal point of view,” Coen said. “When I first got into the movie business, which was almost 40 years ago, the reason I was able to make movies with Ethan—the reason we were able to have a career—is because the studios at that point had an ancillary market that was a backstop for more risky films. Those were VHS cassettes—all of those home video markets. Which is essentially television, right? Those markets are responsible for my career. I’m not going to bust them now because they’ve become very successful and are sort of overtaking the market.”

Coen concluded, “I have mixed feelings about it, obviously. The first thing, you want people to see it on the big screen. But the other part of it is—that’s been part of the history of our movies since the very beginning.”

This is not Coen’s first experience making a movie for a streaming service. The Coen Brothers’ most recent film—The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western anthology consisting of six vignettes—was a Netflix production released in 2018.

Also joining Coen on stage were Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, who starred as Lord Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in this black-and-white adaptation of the famed Shakespeare play. The Tragedy of Macbeth was written and directed by Joel Coen, and is the first film directed by one of the Coen brothers without the other’s involvement. It will open in theaters on December 25 and begin streaming on January 14.

Where to watch The Tragedy of Macbeth