23 Years Ago, Jean-Claude Van Damme Predicted Movie Streaming Via Phone!

On June 16, 2001, Jean-Claude Van Damme appeared on the talk show Tout le monde en parle and made a bizarre prediction in front of hosts Thierry Ardisson and Laurent Baffie—a prediction that elicited laughter from the audience but would later prove to be accurate.

“We will distribute movies through the phone, it will be the first time it’s done.”

Did the Belgian actor foresee the era of streaming? It appears so, and he claimed to be personally working on this new way of broadcasting films.

“I’m trying to enter the media world on the net. We will announce a movie on the net, from each country, then we go on the web, and then we do it with antennas,” he explained to an audience that did not take him seriously, as you can see in the video below.

Despite the skeptical looks, the actor was confident: “We can reach 250 million viewers. That’s something good for a quality film at 1.99 dollars. This way, people all around the world, even those without much money, can just press a button, they don’t have to wait 40 hours to download… […] I can’t wait for satellites, they spend too much money, it costs millions of dollars. So we’ve found a system, thanks to the net.”

Although he didn’t exactly cash in on streaming, Jean-Claude Van Damme was indeed correct and has been seen online in Netflix’s The Last Mercenary and the parody series Jean-Claude Van Johnson on Prime Video.

We will soon see him in the action film Kill ‘Em All 2, set to release on November 18th through VOD.