When Jean-Claude Van Damme Announced Advent of Streaming in 2001 He was Ridiculed

In 2001, on the set of a Canadian talk show titled Tout le monde en parle, Jean-Claude Van Damme uttered words that surprised Therry Ardisson, one of the show's hosts and infuriated Laurent Baffi, a French writer and director who was also present in the studio. As explained by Allociné Publicité, Van Damme announced that there would be a new way of distributing movies that would change the face of the entire industry. At the time, those accompanying him did not hide distrustful and even mocking glances, but Van Damme stood by his theory.

However, no one took him seriously, and the stares visible on the surviving clip suggest that people did not believe his words.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, however, did not give up and continued to try to explain exactly what he meant, but the vision of a world in which we can watch movies fully digitally was too abstract for those sitting in the studio.

Although the action movie actor was not the one who revolutionized the movie industry, introducing streaming, his statements indicate that he was more or less aware of where cinema was heading and what its evolution would look like. It is therefore safe to say that Jean-Claude Van Damme has predicted the future. One of the first to go down this path was Amazon Prime Video, launching as a platform offering streaming services for movies and series in 2006. A year later, it was joined by Netflix, which in its first years grew to become a giant in the industry. The two were followed by Hulu (2008), HBO Go (2010), Disney (2019) and other such platforms.