'You don’t have an audience that’s paying attention': Willem Dafoe feels 'challenging movies' don't do well on streaming services

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Willem Dafoe is widely acknowledged for his deep and complex roles. ‘The Budapest Hotel’ star opened up about movies and how streaming services have different audiences when it comes to ‘more difficult movies.’

“The kind of attention that people give at home isn’t the same,” Dafoe said, adding “More difficult movies, more challenging movies can not do as well when you don’t have an audience that’s really paying attention. That’s a big thing. I miss the social thing of where movies fit in the world. You go see a movie, you go out to dinner, you talk about it later, and that spreads out.”

Willem Dafoe explains 'monopoly' of streaming services

The Oscar-nominated actor further reflected, “People now go home, they say, ‘Hey, honey, let’s watch something stupid tonight,’ and they flip through and they watch five minutes of 10 movies, and they say, ‘Forget it, let’s go to bed.’ Where’s that discourse found?”

Dafoe said on changing dynamism with The Guardian, “They aren’t making movies the same way they used to.”

“They’re being financed by toy companies and other entities, and they become the vehicle to make the movies, because they know how to do that. Streaming, they’re becoming like a monopoly, they have the means of production and distribution. And so it’s very complicated," he added.

Willem Dafoe was recently honored with Hollywood Walk of Fame

Dafoe has played a variety of characters in his filming career and was honored recently with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “There’s a tendency, particularly when people get older, that they refine their impulses and like to work a certain way and don’t like to jump around,” Dafoe told Variety.

“It’s like planting seeds in different places. Do you plant a monocrop, where you’re waiting for that one thing to grow? Or do you plant many different things so that when you least expect it, opportunities arise, and you always have a certain variety?," he added.

He is set to return to the big screen in Tim Burton’s ‘Beetlejuice 2' and Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu.’

Talking about his most recent flick, ‘Poor Things’, Dafoe said, “My character has this beautiful predicament, because he adores her so much and she adores him, but what she needs, he can’t give.”