5 Oddly Specific Movie Tropes Hollywood Is Obsessed With Right Now
3. Dumping Mid-Budget Sci-Fi Movies On Netflix
Are you a Hollywood executive? Are you currently overseeing a sci-fi movie that's making your box-office sense tingle in a bad way? Then do we have some good news for you! Netflix will probably buy the rights, taking that potential problem off your mind.
As the streaming giant has slowly become a regular feature of the average household, the caliber of film it's been able to release has raised substantially. Last year they put out Bright, a $90 million blockbuster that performed very well globally, and since then, the platform has become a viable location to launch virtually any type of movie.
This is good news for studios who know when they have a tough sell on their hands, because it gives them a safe place to offload their problem movies and gain an instant chunk of change in return. And recently, this has been happening a lot with mid-budget sci-fi movies.
In February, we saw Netflix release The Cloverfield Paradox after buying it off Paramount for more than $50 million, more-or-less covering the studio's losses and giving the streaming service a flagship movie to tout as their own. Shortly after, Netflix launched Alex Garland's Annihilation in select foreign markets after purchasing partial rights from - again - Paramount, who feared the movie would bomb.
Around the same time, the service acquired sci-fi thriller Extinction from Universal, who had intended to release the movie theatrically last January - but, smelling a flop, decided to cash out (the movie isn't very good, so this was a smart movie on Universal's part).
Even outside the sci-fi genre, dumping risky projects on Netflix has now become a thing. Last year, the service closed a deal with New Line to secure international rights to the studio's Shaft reboot, and that was even before the movie started filming.
But the biggest case of Netflix-dumping came rather recently, when Warner Bros sold off Andy Serkis' Mowgli. This is a massive blockbuster with a ton of stars, including Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, and will absolutely cement Netflix's position as a force to be reckoned with - both in terms of streaming, and as a place to go for blockbuster entertainment - going forward.
Still.. all this does make you wonder why studios keep greenlighting these "risky" projects in the first place.