Gianluca Sergi has been obsessing about movies since he was a child growing up in Milan. Now a 54-year-old professor at the University of Nottingham, he founded a film club in his hometown when he was 13, moved to the U.K. in 1991 to study the subject, and has dedicated an academic career to analyzing the industry—specifically, its social currency and power. His enthusiasm is contagious. A few years ago, his work caught the attention of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who invited Sergi to present his findings at a board meeting of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in December of 2016. It was a particularly fraught time in the movie business: Sean Parker had just launched his Screening Room proposition—a never-materialized concept that would have allowed consumers to watch new movies at home for a premium—and a string of supposedly surefire-hit sequels and reboots had recently failed to connect with moviegoers. For the thousandth time in the medium's 100-plus years, it seemed movies were doomed to extinction.

Sergi offered a salve for the Academy's wounds. No, the academic said to his worried audience, the movie business wasn't imploding. Rather, according to his studies of ticket sales from 1980 to 1999 and again from 2000 to 2018, the numbers were relatively stable: 1.2 billion tickets sold versus 1.38 billion in the latter 18 years. But while Sergi believed warnings of the movie business's demise were premature, his presentation didn't lack gravity. To him, moviegoing had become a vital contributor to the overall health of society. His findings, based on user data published by the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the British Film Institute, and similar bodies in other countries, indicated that of the leading cultural activities, the movies are attended by more people than theater or dance events. While Sergi believed the business was still healthy, he warned that any potential demise would mean not just the shuttering of movie theaters, but a collapse of social mores.

"That's the bottom floor," he said, "If you remove movies, people will be culturally starved. There is no country on Earth that can afford that. It would be catastrophic."

He delivered his message just as Netflix, Amazon, and other streamers were spending billions and billions to keep viewers glued to their couches; his Academy audience was rapt. Sergi was so convincing in his reaffirmation of their work that he prompted the organization to create a task force to investigate the future of film. Headed by Little Miss Sunshine producer Albert Berger, the committee would be a study group of sorts, with the mission of speaking to various people within the Academy about where the business is going and how it can adapt to the changing landscape.

"It makes you think, What is a film? And how should a film be presented, especially in a new world?"

Their first order of business: decide on what makes a movie a movie. As audiences fragment, streaming services grow, and filmmakers experiment with format and form, it seemed as if this group might be able to define what even qualifies as a film in our increasingly anarchic content economy. It's been nearly a century since the 90-minute film emerged as something of a standard, when exhibitors of the 1930s needed a product they could confidently advertise as unavailable elsewhere and show as many times as possible in a given day. (That delineator became increasingly important in the television age, Sergi told me.) The last decade in particular has brought many new questions: Is a work destined primarily to be screened on a laptop or phone still a movie? What about prestige content from a premium-cable provider? The Academy is, after all, the group that oversees the various bylaws for the Oscars. The definition of a film seemed destined to come up.

As of this spring, they are still looking into it.

Many Academy members thought the issue would come to a head in April, when the governors would meet to discuss the regulations for next year's awards, following a race in which Roma—Alfonso Cuarón's Netflix-distributed art-house film—won three Oscars and came close to taking best picture after a limited theatrical run. Rumor had it that Steven Spielberg himself was planning on proposing a rule change that would prevent films that are primarily streamed online from being eligible for Academy consideration. Gossip swirled around the situation, but it wound up a bust: Spielberg didn't show, a rule change was never even suggested, and the meeting ended as it started, with best-picture eligibility remaining as it was.

"We recognize that if a film meets the minimum length of 40 minutes and theatrical-release requirements, that's within our rules: seven days in the theater in Los Angeles County, then it is eligible," Academy governor Lois Burwell, who heads up the group's award-rules committee, told me. "The objective [of the task force], really, is to host discussions with Academy members to get points of view on the rules for Oscar feature-film eligibility and other topics."

That improbably difficult task of defining what makes a movie a movie is at the heart of Hollywood's biggest anxieties these days. While Avengers: Endgame might have pounded global box-office records, large swaths of Hollywood are still consumed with how Silicon Valley is disrupting their business, making content creators offers they can't refuse, and forgoing traditional theatrical releases for direct-to-consumer hits. (And hey, there's an argument to be made that those billions-boosting Avengers are more TV series on steroids than a film franchise. That's for another column.) "I think it is absolutely the Academy's job [to define a movie and establish guidelines], but they've been bought off by Netflix," one industry veteran, who declined to be identified, told me. "Netflix is to the industry what the drug companies are to Congress. No one wants to bite the hand that feeds them."

Just look at Amazon Studios' latest stunt with the mini-movie Guava Island, from noted disruptor Donald Glover. That 55-minute experiment debuted at Coachella before showing up for free on Amazon's service, a scenario that never could have happened in a pre-streaming world. Was it a film? A festival experience? A few weeks after it premiered, I asked Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke for her definition of a movie. "Whether [viewers] see them in theaters or on Amazon Prime, the same love and care goes into partnerships with artists who have compelling stories to tell that we can amplify across the world," she told me.

The question is even vexing the likes of Martin Scorsese, who is currently finishing his upcoming film The Irishman. The 76-year-old filmmaker is a cinema aficionado and has been passionately preserving film reels for decades. Netflix was the only studio that would cough up $125 million for his epic gangster film starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and their digitally youthened faces. He's currently asking for the town to give the streaming giant a little leeway. "They're gonna work it out," he said at the 50th anniversary of Film at Lincoln Center in April. "I want people to be patient with them, because they need to try different things [and] argue it out, because it makes you think, What is a film? And how should a film be presented, especially in a new world?"

When Sergi made a return visit to Berger's film committee last summer, he was asked to share with them his own definition of a movie. His answer was threefold. One: at least 90 minutes of content. Two: a belief in standards, as set by the history of the medium. Three: creation of a social contract between the patron and the exhibitors whereby in order to experience the film, you have to leave the house, sit in a dark theater, and commune with people you don't know. He sees that last point as the most crucial.

"That social contract is not required by a Netflix, an Apple, or a Disney+," said Sergi. "Consider the fact that we live in a time when we are so divided. What are the opportunities for people to go and share a communal space and enjoy an experience together, without worrying whether or not you voted for Trump or for Brexit? Almost every country right now has a fundamental issue of a lack of social cohesion and a lack of opportunities where people can remind each other that, fundamentally, we love stories. We love laughing; we love crying; we are not aliens here. If you remove that element, if you say, 'Cinema can die, it's not a problem, we can still watch films online,' what you are doing is, you're removing the social contract— and you do that at your own peril."

Pretty heady stuff for the industry that brought us The Emoji Movie. And as ever, filmmakers have more to fret about than their obligation to the greater social good. For most, funding is the central struggle, and the luxury of a theatrical release is becoming easier to dismiss if deep-pocketed streamers come along. Jonathan King, outgoing president of narrative film and television at Participant Media, has a unique vantage point from which to watch the debate. Last year, Participant produced two best-picture contenders, Roma and the eventual winner, Green Book. They had very different distribution deals. Netflix streamed the former, after its brief theatrical run; the latter went to Universal Pictures with a traditional rollout. I recently asked him what a movie is.

"The questions about how movies are distributed are certainly valid for anyone who has a stake in the movie business as a business," said King. "But for people who have a stake in making movies as creative endeavors, which first and foremost is what we do, our intention and how you are making it is paramount."

King himself defines a movie as a piece of programming between 90 and 120 minutes long, told in one sitting, that has something on its mind and something to say about the world at large.

"We make every movie as a movie," King said. "Some we make with distribution in place. Some we make independently... but we approach them all with the same intention."

All told, Participant has sold three movies to Netflix: 2015's Beasts of No Nation, Roma, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which debuted at this year's Sundance festival. King said that all three were made with the same purpose: to back the filmmaker's vision and what the movie has to say. "When we premiered Roma at the Venice Film Festival before it was released in any form theatrically, I don't think anyone looked at it and said, 'That's not a movie,' " said King. "When Alfonso said 'I'm ready,' and I flew from my vacation back East to a screening room in Los Angeles, before we decided what we were going to do about its distribution, I saw a gorgeous and moving piece of art. And it was a movie."

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For his part, Sergi doesn't consider the streamers to be forces of evil in this business. Rather, he believes Netflix and its ilk likely encourage more people to see movies because they foster an appetite for film. It's the same counter-intuitive notion that made Avatar simultaneously the highest-grossing movie in the world and the most pirated movie in the world back in 2009. He hopes to return to the Academy this fall, armed with new data about how the audience for theatrical exhibition is narrowing in tandem with the kinds of films studios are releasing in theaters, a fact that concerns him greatly. Adding to that worry is the stagnant federal minimum wage and the rising cost of movie tickets. That will further narrow audiences, he said.

These topics remain areas of interest for the Academy. And the group intends to keep listening, said Burwell. But taking action is a much more challenging proposition, considering that the organization's last few efforts to make sweeping changes have gone off the rails." People are tired of the debate and wanted to give it a break," said the industry veteran. "There are still constituents on both sides of the fight, but I don't know which way a new vote would go."

Until then, maybe grab a friend and head to a movie or three this summer. Our social order may depend upon it.