Matt Damon says Netflix asks creators to repeat the plot "three or four times" for people on their phones

Which apparently extends into both action sequences and moments of quieter contemplation. Here’s Damon: “The standard way to make an action movie, that we learned, was you usually have three set pieces. One in the first act, one in the second, one in the third, and the big one with all the explosions and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That’s your kind of finale. Now, [Netflix is] like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes?’ We want people to stay tuned in.” Meanwhile, Damon says, creators for the streamers are being told that “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue, because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”

Netflix and its fellow streamers’ war with the human attention span has become an increasingly commented-on battleground in recent years; back in 2024, anonymous screenwriters were opening up about being told by the streamer that characters should “announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” The general belief among the streamers appears to be that their films will either be watched on phones, or run in direct competition with the devices in viewers’ hands; Damon, who’s otherwise pretty positive about the relationship with Netflix—he and Affleck have both highlighted how the streamer worked with them to put together a deal where more of The Rip‘s budget went to paying its crew—notes that such approaches can’t help but have knock-on artistic effects: “It’s going to really start to infringe on how we’re telling these stories.”