I did something over the Christmas break I once swore I’d never do: I watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” on a smartphone.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic is my favourite film; I’ve seen it dozens of times, always on a big screen (in theatres and on a TV monitor). Kubrick shot it for the largest format available: the majestic curved Cinerama canvas that made moviegoers gape in the pre-IMAX era. To see “2001” anywhere smaller than on a giant screen, or at least a widescreen TV, always struck me as cinematic heresy.
But I relented for the sake of this story, which asks whether screen size still matters in an age when Hollywood itself seems unsure. Not since television began invading homes in the 1950s — a shift even more profound than the 1980s home-video revolution — have smaller screens so aggressively challenged the grandeur of the theatrical experience.
The experiment began with my wife’s new iPhone. The picture was crisp; the sound was better than expected coming through tiny smartphone speakers. Yet something was missing. Kubrick’s vast compositions shrank to thumbnail scale, faces lost expression and that famous match-cut leap from bone to spaceship flew by without a shiver. It felt less like watching “2001” than like peering at it through a telescope.
Hollywood, meanwhile, can’t stop debating size. Consider last year’s major industry headlines: the anticipated purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery by streaming giant Netflix, the shrinking of theatrical windows and the Academy Awards ceremony’s planned switch from broadcast TV to YouTube. Each of them sparking controversy that boils down to a single question: what size screen are people supposed to watch?
Streaming services insist they believe in theatres, and Netflix is promising not to mess with Warners’ distribution plans if, as expected, it acquires the legacy studio (there’s a rival bid from Paramount). Yet the business models of Netflix and other top streamers like Amazon’s Prime Video, Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus suggest theatres are at best an after-thought.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos boasted a while back about his son watching “Lawrence of Arabia” on a smartphone. Sarandos more recently called movie theatres “outdated.”
When Netflix acquired Guillermo del Toro’s filmed-in-Toronto epic “Frankenstein,” the grandly conceived monster saga was expected to have a 1,000-screen North American theatrical release. That number had shrunk to 400 screens when the film arrived in cinemas on Oct. 17. By the time streaming commenced on Nov. 7, the theatrical run had almost ended.
Consider the fate of “Jay Kelly,” Noah Baumbach’s comedy about memory and fame starring George Clooney as an entitled but regretful movie icon. A crowd-pleaser aimed at the older movie audience that has been slow to return to theatres in the post-pandemic era, “Jay Kelly” lasted barely three weeks on big screens following its Nov. 14 launch in select theatres, before it started streaming on Netflix.
You can’t really blame moviegoers for opting to stay home. Why would anyone spend upwards of $100 on a pair of tickets, parking, popcorn and drinks — and maybe even more for babysitting and dinner out — to see something that will be online within a month?
The pandemic sped up this compression of release windows. What once took a year between theatrical and home releases now takes weeks.
This makes it all the more difficult for smaller films to establish themselves in theatres. Such was the case with the Focus Features release last March of “Black Bag,” Steven Soderbergh’s stylish espionage thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender.
Soderbergh had high hopes for it and even planned to make a sequel with writer David Koepp, but the film never found an audience during its brief theatrical run of just over three weeks. A sequel now seems unlikely.
In an interview with British newspaper the Independent, Soderbergh admitted to being heartbroken by the apparent audience indifference toward “Black Bag,” which had a stellar cast (Pierce Brosnan and Naomie Harris also starred) and received strong reviews.
“This is the kind of film I made my career on,” Soderbergh lamented. “And if a mid-level-budget, star-driven movie can’t seem to get people over the age of 25 years old to come out to theatres — if that’s truly a dead zone — then that’s not a good thing for movies. What’s gonna happen to the person behind me who wants to make this kind of film?”
It’s a fair question, but audiences are still flocking to the truly big pictures. IMAX’s 2025 box office hit a record-breaking $1.2 billion (U.S.), buoyed by titles such as “F1: The Movie,” “Sinners” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” The hottest ticket of 2026, as advance sales attest, looks to be Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” the first major feature shot entirely with IMAX 65-mm film cameras.
Premium formats and revived widescreen processes like VistaVision, used to magnificent effect in “The Brutalist,” have shown that theatre-size spectacle still sells, when the material demands it.
Still, a lot of people can’t tear their eyes away from tiny screens, whether they’re on iPhones, iPads or even Apple Watches (via third-party video apps). For them, “good enough” has replaced “great” as a viewing experience.
Every moviegoer knows the irritation caused by the person seated in the row ahead who can’t resist checking their smartphone during the film, that glowing tiny screen undermining the 50-foot one in front of us.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran a feature titled “34 Movies and Shows to Watch on a Plane — or Trapped at the Airport.” I sympathize. Stuck between terminals, I too might watch something small on an iPad or iPhone, just not “2001” or “Lawrence of Arabia.”
For distributors, committing to a big-screen release brings no guarantees. Black Bear, sister company of Toronto’s Elevation Pictures, took a gamble last fall on “Christy,” a boxing biopic starring Sydney Sweeney that earned raves at the Toronto International Film Festival. Released to more than 2,000 North American screens, it opened to box office of just $1.3 million, one of the weakest wide-release debuts ever. If a rising star can’t fill theatres, who can?
If it’s harder than ever to suss the thinking of moviegoers, the industry itself often defies logic. The recent announcement that the Academy Awards is moving from TV broadcaster ABC to online service YouTube for the 2029 ceremony, a shift aimed at expanding the global audience, drew swift outrage from industry insiders who called it a downgrade for Hollywood’s premier showcase.
The irony is hard to miss. Many of the same people who decry shrinking screens — including the likes of big-screen advocates Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg — have made production and distribution deals with streaming services. In truth, the Oscars have always been a small-screen event, made for living rooms, not multiplexes.
What unsettles people isn’t the shift online itself but what it symbolizes: the academy is conceding, reluctantly but firmly, that the movies’ greatest night now fits comfortably on a phone.
Long before the smartphone era, Marshall McLuhan — Toronto’s own media prophet — anticipated the big- vs. small-screen conflict in “Understanding Media,” his landmark 1964 book. He classified film as a “hot” medium, rich in sensory detail and requiring little audience participation, and television as “cool,” demanding more interpretation and engagement. The distinction, he argued, rested partly in the image’s size and intimacy.
Watching “2001” on an iPhone confirmed for me what McLuhan intuited. In many ways, film has cooled to the temperature of TV; we’ve grown used to holding entire worlds in our hands. Yet the awe Kubrick intended — that vast, humbling sense of humanity dwarfed by the cosmos — can only emerge when the image overwhelms us.
So yes, screen size still matters, not just for convenience or commerce, but also for engendering wonder.
I’m still a believer in big screens. Cinema was never meant to fit in your pocket.
