If you enjoy your studio films with a side of thoughtfulness, then you might want to start worrying. Last year, Warner Bros. stated that it wanted to move away from “auteur” directors who demand such things as final cut. Perhaps they were already worried about the release of Blade Runner 2049, which they distributed in the US. After that film’s inevitable box office failure (how they expected to profit on a $150 million budget with a sequel to a 35-year-old cult hit is beyond me), director Denis Villeneuve didn’t sound especially enthusiastic about the future either. “Let’s just say it would not be a good idea for me to make a movie like that twice,” he told The Telegraph. “It was only when I came out that I realized we had made a monster.”

Other studios seem to be shying away from risk, as well. Last year, Paramount took a hit on the extraordinarily divisive mother!. This year, with new leadership, they began cutting their losses and selling off their more risky ventures. The Cloverfield Paradox was sold to Netflix and almost immediately debuted on their platform. Annihilation received a domestic theatrical release, but will forego a theatrical release in foreign markets to instead debut on Netflix. Universal seems to be joining in on the trend as well, selling off its sci-fi thriller Extinction to the popular streaming platform.

Meanwhile, other auteur-driven projects are going directly to streaming services. On the same day Annihilation got its domestic release, Duncan Jones’ long-term passion project, Mute, launched directly on Netflix, fully produced and bankrolled by the streaming giant. With other major studios, like Universal and Disney, almost exclusively focused on long-running franchises and recognizable branding, does this all point to the death-knell of smart cinema? Are streaming services like Netflix the only outlets for audiences seeking more than big effects movies and cookie-cutter character types?

Maybe, maybe not. It’s probably worth noting that The Cloverfield Paradox and Mute aren’t very good movies. The former feels like a number of different screenplays mashed together, as the studio couldn’t decide how explicitly they wanted to tie it to the broader Cloverfield universe. Eventually, they decided it was easier to give up and cut their losses than dump more money into rewrites and re-shoots. Netflix got a nice publicity boost with its surprise release on Superbowl Sunday, but Paramount probably saved themselves from having to explain yet another box office disappointment to their shareholders. It was a win for both parties.

Mute, on the other hand, is a long-simmering passion project from director Duncan Jones that probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without Netflix’s investment. The screenplay is a wild mash-up of different ideas and aesthetics: a classic hard-boiled narrative (complete with a missing femme fatale), a Blade Runner-inspired production design, and a mute protagonist (played by Alexander Skarsgard). The film splits its time between its title character and a duo played by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux. The former story is deadly serious, whereas the latter spends most of its time hanging out with its characters while they hang out and make wisecracks…when they’re not torturing people and fending off Theroux’s character’s pedophilic inclinations. It’s a weird mix, and it never really works, even when the two story-lines become intertwined.

Having seen it, it’s easy to see why Mute never got greenlit by a major studio, even after the success of Moon and Source Code. There’s an argument to be had for Netflix saving the movie and making it possible, but the end result complicates it. Mute simply looks cheap, especially in the wake of the utterly gorgeous but aesthetically similar Blade Runner 2049. Mute‘s ambitions, however flawed, are far above what Netflix was able to provide, a problem likely to arise with any other riskier ventures that would have been mid-budget exercises in a prior era.

Coupled with the treatment of Annihilation, that’s extra worrisome. Paramount got cold feat on Annihilation after a major shake-up at the executive level, and some test screenings that suggested the film may be “too intellectual” for a broad audience. That’s probably true, but Annihilation is an utter treat for more open-minded viewers. It’s a gorgeous film with a highly original concept and a great cast. It’s also rather abstract and doesn’t provide the viewer with any easy answers. Despite complaints from the executives at Paramount, the film was released with an especially perplexing ending, one that left me pondering the purpose of the film and its messaging long after I left the theater.

In a way, Annihilation is an example of how streaming services could be the future of original content, as it probably would have never reached international audiences at all had it not gotten a streaming distribution deal. But watching Mute and Annihilation back-to-back just proves that the size of the budget still matters. On a $40 million budget, Annihilation is able to completely realize its vision, but there’s absolutely no way that it would have been the same film with the budget Netflix put forth for Mute.

And make no mistake: Paramount isn’t going to continue to bankroll risky films and simply sell them to Netflix. Films are made to make a profit, not recoup their loss while benefiting a competitor. Their decisions regarding The Cloverfield Paradox and Annihilation are a sign that the studio, like its competitors, has little interest in anything other than a surefire hit with a built-in fanbase. Obviously Netflix has other priorities when it comes to content, but they’re not putting their money where their mouth is, at least not at the level that has been historically necessary.

Maybe, as Netflix grows, their ability to fully fund big ideas will expand as well. They have shown a willingness to invest in mid-budget film-making with Bright, but that project was more broadly commercial than most of the films I’ve brought up in this article. It’s star, Will Smith, is a household name, it has a fantasy bend to it, and is only interested in its racial allegories on a surface level. It’s a popcorn flick scaled down to a mid-budget, where Mute is a mid-budget filmed scaled down to a low-budget.

In any case, the only way that we can have an impact is to vote with our dollars and our views. If a film like Annihilation surprises the studio with larger-than-expected returns, they may look into making more movies like that. And if such a film garners a lot of viewers on Netflix, then perhaps they’ll start investing more money in their original productions. But until distributors stop seeing “intellectual” films as box-office poison, we can only expect these trends to continue.