Story highlights
The director is famously not into technology
He says Amazon courted him for over a year
Woody Allen fans may be looking forward to his new original series on Amazon, but the famed director is not happy he agreed to do it.
In an interview with Deadline during the Cannes Film Festival, the well-documented technophobe said that he doesn’t “even know what a streaming service is” and that he’s “regretted every second” since agreeing to do the untitled six-episode series.
“It’s been so hard for me,” Allen said. “I had the cocky confidence, ‘well, I’ll do it like I do a movie. … It’ll be a movie in six parts.’ Turns out, it’s not.”
The director said he doesn’t even watch television, and Amazon courted him for a year and a half to get him to agree to the project.
“Finally, they said ‘look, we’ll do anything that you want; just give us six half-hours,’ ” he said. ” ‘They can be black and white; they can take place in Paris, in New York and California; they can be about a family; they can be comedy; you can be in them; they can be tragic. We don’t have to know anything; just come in with six half-hours.’ “
The streaming service, which is in a heated competition for audiences with the likes of Netflix and Hulu, offered him big money, and he finally gave in to those around him who assured him he could do it, Allen said.
Now he is trying to get it done while on breaks from his film work.
“I only hope that when I finally do it – I have until the end of 2016 – they’re not crushed with disappointment, because they’re nice people, and I don’t want to disappoint them,” Allen said.