“The Shawshank Redemption” star and “Mystic River” Oscar winner Tim Robbins recently told The Guardian that he’s worried about the future of movies given how much algorithms now dictate what viewers watch. And in most cases, the algorithm is leading people to more of the same and not anything unique.
“You go on Netflix right now, you see what films are coming out and you tell me that that’s the future of cinema?” Robbins said. “We’re in big trouble.”
Robbins currently stars on the Apple TV+ science-fiction series “Silo,” which is now in its second season. He told The Guardian that “Shawshank” is one of the reasons he’s holding on to hope that the algorithm can somewhat be defeated given than most audiences rejected the prison drama when it opened in theaters in 1994.
“We’re at 30 years now [on from] Shawshank Redemption,” he said. “When it came out it got good reviews, it got nominated for Academy Awards, but nobody saw it. It was VHS and [Ted] Turner playing it on his television channel [Turner Classic Movies] that changed that. That is a beloved movie. It remains on top of IMDb as the most favored movie of all time. So I know that a quality movie, a quality television show, will last. Whether it’s a hit or not is irrelevant compared to what people are going to think about it in 10, 15, 20 years.”
Robbins hasn’t made a movie since 2019’s “Dark Waters” and explained that he’s now very picky when it comes to selecting roles because “I don’t want to waste my time on a set doing something frivolous. I don’t want to be there for the sake of being there.”
Head over to The Guardian’s website to read Robbins’ latest profile in its entirety.
