Netflix subscribers hoping for a few laughs are about to be out of luck. Richard Pryor’s only movie on Netflix, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, is set to depart the streaming library. Widely considered to be a pivotal film in the world of stand-up comedy and marking the first full-length feature movie consisting of only stand-up comedy, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert is scheduled to leave Netflix on Tuesday, Nov. 30.
Shot at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach, California on December 10, 1978, and directed by Jeff Margolis, Live in Concert not only earned Pryor a 5th place nomination for the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, but also became known as one of the most influential recorded stand-up performances of the modern era. Eddie Murphy praised the comedy special as “the single greatest stand-up performance ever captured on film” when speaking to interviewer Byron Allen back in 2010. Meanwhile, Time named the 78-minute live concert one of their Top 25 Movies on Race. The live concert currently has a 92% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, where audience members have given it a 93% approval rating.
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Patton Oswalt, who won an Emmy in 2016 or his Netflix special Talking For Clapping, also praised the live concert. In a piece for Rolling Stone in 2015, the stand-up comedian credited Live in Concert as being one of the 10 films that changed his life, writing, “it was something that woke up more shit in my head than most other movies I’d seen, you know, where they’re just throwing a lot of different visual things at you. It wasn’t just the social stuff he was doing in his act, either; it was the way he’d give the wind a personality, or a dog a personality, or a car he was shooting with a gun a personality! The way Pryor was vocalizing all this stuff, he was making me see a film in my head.”
Given the high praise Live in Concert has earned, fans of Pryor will be sad to learn of its departure from Netflix. Unfortunately, it appears that Live in Concert is currently unavailable for streaming on other platforms, meaning fans will have to shell out some cash for a DVD or Blu-Ray version of the film if they wish to view it again. It is unclear if it will eventually be available on another streaming platform, such as Hulu, which stream Pryor’s other stand-up special, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip.
Live in Concert will not be the only title departing Netflix on Tuesday, as the streamer will also be saying goodbye to titles including Freedom Writers, Seasons 1-6 of Glee, and Million Dollar Baby, among several others. The departing titles will make room for the long list of incoming December 2021 titles, which will kick off on Wednesday, Dec. 1, with things including the third and final season of Lost in Space, Death at a Funeral, and several Final Destination films.
