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Home / Entertainment

Psychic star? Ben Affleck's bizarrely spot-on 2003 interview resurfaces

NZ Herald
10 Jul, 2018 08:46 AM2 mins to read

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Ben Affleck's prescient 2003 interview.
Ben Affleck's prescient 2003 interview.

Ben Affleck's prescient 2003 interview.

For those who think Ben Affleck is just a Hollywood actor, director and writer, he's now added another "profession" to his CV — psychic.

A 2003 interview of the Good Will Hunting star has resurfaced thanks to Twitter user John Backus, who points out that Affleck basically predicted streaming services Netflix and Spotify during his The Battle Of Shaker Heights press junket.

In the middle of the interview, he brings up the topic of file sharing and explains how in the future people will have access to music and videos on demand for an annual subscription fee.

"I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works," Affleck, a possible wizard, said. "It'll be movies on demand, but it'll be a tiered structure. Like if you want to watch it first weekend, maybe it won't be available first weekend.

"But then if you want to watch it, you'll pay more. And then as it goes to another stage in its release, it'll become less expensive. But there's a lot more adoption that has to happen, technologically speaking, right now before people can watch movies, or at least integrate it in terms of a PC or web connection.

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"The technology's not quite there yet, but it will be within, I'd say, five years."

Almost five years later in 2007, Netflix announced it would begin streaming content online. A year later, Spotify launched in 2008 — precisely five years later as Affleck predicted it would.

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Affleck and Damon to make McDonald's multi-million dollar Monopoly fraud film

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