The Godfather Trilogy Will Drop On Paramount+ On The Same Day As The Limited Series The Offer
By now you've surely seen some trailers and stills from "The Offer," an upcoming Paramount+ limited series depicting the frankly insane behind-the-scenes drama that went on while "The Godfather" was being made. Miles Teller, Juno Temple, Matthew Goode, Giovanni Ribisi, and Dan Fogler are starring in the series which debuts April 28, 2022, on Paramount+, and they've just announced that you can augment "The Offer" with the actual "Godfather" films themselves.
"The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," and "The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone" (aka the new, Francis Ford Coppola-approved cut of "The Godfather Part III") are all coming to Paramount+ the very same day "The Offer" premieres on that streaming service.
It's a little sad to me that it should be news that one of the best film series of all time will be streaming at no additional cost, but that's the reality of the subscription streaming service market right now. It wasn't always that way.
Netflix gave video rental stores the kiss of death
I want to paint you all a picture. The year is 2007. "Halo 3" is breaking video game sales records, "The Big Bang Theory" debuts on TV, the US economy is flying high not realizing its racing towards a cliff edge as the housing bubble is about to burst and video stores are about to be dealt a death blow by this weird company called Netflix that has the bright idea to take their DVD-rental-by-mail service digital.
It's easy to forget that the way Netflix established its cultural dominance wasn't with its original content, but with a large catalog of older movies and TV shows. You can thank the "Blockbuster At Home" model established by Netflix just as the world was truly figuring out the internet for the convenience you experience every day.
As a movie fan, it's been sad for me to see the libraries of the top streamers continuously shrink over the years. There are a few reasons for that, not the least of which is that everybody has their own streaming service nowadays so there's not going to be one centralized place that has everything like the glory days of streaming when Netflix could easily and cheaply license movies from all the studios. But sadly, I think it's all internal number-crunching and algorithms telling the higher-ups that what retains subscribers and gets their eyeballs is new content. New movies, new shows, new limited series.
There are a few outliers out there. HBO Max has a surprisingly deep catalog available, especially of older movies, and Disney+ tends to have a lot of deep-cut Disney titles. Then, of course, there are the niche services like Shudder and The Criterion Channel, but the general feeling I get when I look around is that we're getting fewer movies and more noise.
Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky, but I think I'm right about this. I'd love it if we could get back to a place where it's a given that the best movies of all time are available at the base level of these streaming services and not require the additional cost to view because that's where the eyeballs of the next generation are. If we want an appreciation of movies to exist beyond whatever the latest superhero thing in theaters is, that's how you do it.
It is a good thing that these companies are at the very least recognizing it'd be weird to have "The Offer" on their platform without the movies that inspired it. It's a baby step in the right direction.