In the 1930s and 1940s, the film studio MGM pumped out 50
new movies a year, most of which featured the world’s biggest stars at the
time: Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and countless others. MGM
co-founder and lead executive, Louis B. Mayer, famously boasted that the studio
had “more stars than there are in the heavens.” Not long after that, antitrust
regulation and the advent of television ended Hollywood’s system of studio
dominance, and no company has been as prolific since.
Netflix in 2021 is the closest thing.
Last month, Disney revealed an enormous trove of new content for its streaming service, Disney+. That followed WarnerMedia’s announcement that all 17 of its films this year would be available on HBO Max the same day they debuted in theaters.
And on Tuesday, Netflix — the biggest streaming service of
them all, with 195 million subscribers worldwide — announced its 2021 film
slate: some 70 movies featuring Academy Award winners, box office stars and a
reminder of its power in a Hollywood that has been irrevocably changed during
the pandemic.
The normally secretive company made the announcement with
the help of a fast-paced trailer. Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson,
the high-profile stars of “Red Notice,” Netflix’s $160 million entry into the
PG-13 action world, kicked off the video, which highlighted comedies, dramas,
horror, family films and foreign-language movies. (The company did not disclose
most of the release dates.)
It concluded with Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio,
the leads of Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” walking out of an aircraft carrier,
a not-so-subtle reminder that the company, once an also-ran when it came to
luring prestige filmmakers and big stars, is now an industry behemoth.
“We have found our way into the business with some
incredible, world-class filmmakers,” Scott Stuber, the pinnacle of Netflix’s
movie division, mentioned in an interview. “People saying, ‘You’ll never be
able to do it,’ was personally, the easiest way to make me go do it.”
The director Jane Campion, an Oscar winner for “The Piano,”
will make her Netflix debut with “The Power of the Dog,” starring Benedict
Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst. Lin-Manuel Miranda will direct his first film,
the variation of the stage musical “tick, tick… Boom,” whereas Jay-Z will
collaborate with Netflix for the primary time by producing “The Harder They
Fall,” a western starring Idris Elba, Regina King and Zazie Beetz. This month,
the corporate may even launch the status movies “The White Tiger” and “Malcolm
& Marie” (starring Zendaya and John David Washington) with hopes of gaining
Oscar consideration.
The breadth of Netflix’s content material tells the story of
the tumult within the film enterprise in the course of the pandemic. Once seen
as the last word Hollywood disrupter — the largest risk to the very existence
of the film enterprise — Netflix has now develop into one thing of a savior
with its large attain and little dependence on theatrical distribution.
When different studios have been scaling again, Netflix went
large in buying a slew of titles from the yr’s movie festivals, together with
“Concrete Cowboy,” with Mr. Elba, the Rosamund Pike-led “I Care a Lot” and
Halle Berry’s directorial debut, “Bruised.” Netflix was additionally capable of
purchase completed movies from different studios, which selected to dump them
in an effort to restore stability sheets decimated by the widespread closing of
theaters.
For occasion, Disney offered Netflix its adaptation of the
best-selling novel “Woman in the Window,” starring Amy Adams and directed by
Joe Wright (“Atonement”). It will develop into accessible this yr, as will the
buddy comedy “Bad Trip” that MGM produced and Sony’s animated movie “Wish
Dragon.” (Last yr the corporate took “The Trial of the Chicago 7” off
Paramount’s palms and is now selling it for Oscar consideration.)
Netflix can also be recommitting to the genres which have
made it profitable. The last installments of the teenager romances “To All the
Boys” and “The Kissing Booth” are coming in 2021, as are teenage horror films
like the variation of the Adam Nevill novel “No One Gets Out Alive” and the
“Fear Street” trilogy from the filmmaker Leigh Janiak (“Honeymoon”).
Mr. Stuber mentioned he was inspired that “the quality of
the filmmaking continues to grow” on Netflix however want to enhance the corporate’s
give attention to big-budget motion movies. He sees Zack Snyder’s “Army of the
Dead” as one instance of that this yr, however can also be trying past 2021 to
films like “The Gray Man” starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans from Joe and
Anthony Russo (“The Avengers”) and a brand new adaptation of “The Chronicles of
Narnia.”
In 2019, Mr. Stuber tried to achieve a take care of the main
exhibitors for the discharge of “The Irishman” however was stymied by the
theaters’ insistence that they get to indicate movies completely for shut to a
few months earlier than they moved to Netflix.
That calculation has now modified with WarnerMedia
collapsing the theatrical window fully and Universal Pictures negotiating
offers with exhibitors like AMC and Cinemark that contain revenue-sharing on
premium video-on-demand gross sales. Mr. Stuber continues to be occupied with
negotiating with the theater chains however won’t achieve this till the
pandemic ends.
“I do believe we all needed a bit of an evolution to give movies
that were not made from intellectual property an opportunity,” he mentioned.
“Now we are waiting to see what the theater business becomes. When that
tectonic plate stops, we will be able to have those conversations. We are open
to those conversations.”