By Netflix has been teasing multiple projects as part of its Geeked Week celebrations over the last few days, but almost all of it has been about TV series or games with only a little about their original films.
Speaking with Collider recently at the grand reopening of the American Cinematheque at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood, Netflix’s Head of Film Scott Stuber offered updates on multiple projects but all seemed to be in the same state – namely they’re all in development and waiting on scripts to be delivered before they get to work on them.
This includes the “BioShock” film script with Michael Green (“Blade Runner 2049”) currently at work on it, a script for the “Gears of War” film adaptation, Rian Johnson’s third “Knives Out” film, a script for the “Red Notice” sequel which he expects “relatively soon,” and a third film in their “Extraction” franchise.
He also touched upon “The Gray Man” sequel saying the Russos have talked about it but “we gotta really slow down and make sure, ‘What makes that character great, and how do we really extend that story?’”. That suggests it’s nowhere near ready.
He sounds more excited about new films from Kathryn Bigelow and Noah Baumbach, both of which are starting to come together.
Separately he tells Variety the streamer plans to shift to 25-30 major original movies being released each year – effectively halving the new movie every week strategy once touted a few years back. Stuber explains to the trade:
“That was a reaction to the competition. How do we make sure that our consumer who’s used to a lot feels like there’s a lot? It was difficult. And as I’ve said many a time, there are not 70 great ideas on the planet for a movie. So it really was like, ‘OK, let’s get back to a place.’
So to me, I don’t want a prescriptive number anymore. I really want what is the best version of that and great is always perceived in all of our minds what that thing may be, but perception is really in the reality of what that is. So it could be a teen comedy. If it’s a teen comedy, make Superbad, make American Pie, make the best version of that thing I’ve ever seen. If it’s a drama, make Boogie Nights, make Goodfellas.”
The figure is potentially referring only to English-language films as whilst the company produced around 48 English-language films for its service this year, it also made or acquired around 100 films in another language including Spanish, Italian, Korean, Dutch, Hindi, Polish, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, French, Filipino, Turkish, Thai, German, Norwegian, Indonesian and Zulu.
The streamer recently released “Nyad” and David Fincher’s “The Killer”. “Rustin” debuts this week, followed by “Leo” for Thanksgiving and “Family Switch” at month’s end. In December there’s “Leave the World Behind,” “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” “Maestro” and the first “Rebel Moon” film followed by “Society of the Snow” and “Lift” in early January.
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