The "Okja" cast tackles the Netflix Cannes debate
Netflix made a bigger splash at Cannes than intended when it visited the prestigious film festival for the first time this year, bringing along new films "Okja" and "The Meyerowitz Stories."
French cinema owners balked at the streaming giant's business model of releasing films to their at-home members without a prior theatrical run, and the ensuing debate resulted in Cannes implementing stricter rules for 2018 that could leave Netflix out of the fest.
But "Okja" star Tilda Swinton thinks they're overreacting.
"Cinema is a really elastic and robust old dame," she told CBS News. "It's a flexible and incredibly durable and significant, important cultural form, and it's not going anywhere."
Co-star Steven Yeun concurred, explaining that Netflix fills a very important vacancy in the film production landscape.
"We're just at an interesting time where we seem to be entering a huge transition in a lot of things," he said. "I don't think anybody wants the theaters to go away -- I mean, that's such an amazing experience -- but you can kind of argue to that end about how we got to this place that you need to ask someplace such as Netflix to green-light a movie such as this."
"Okja" will be released in select theaters and on Netflix June 28.
