Netflix Is Doubling Down On Big-Budget Movies
Netflix has been making big moves lately. They were the first big streaming company and are still the top dog in the game, but for the first time since they completely demolished the entertainment landscape, it really feels like they've got some serious competition.
With Disney+, HBOMax, Hulu, AppleTV+, and a dozen more services all bringing their best to the table (not to mention bags upon bags of money), Netflix knows they can't rest on their laurels. You may remember we ran a story recently about how they're moving into video games.
Variety has the scoop that Netflix is shifting around their exec leadership, promoting Kira Goldberg and Ori Marmur to a new team tasked with shepherding even more "big-budget, four-quadrant" features onto the platform.
While news of executive shifts is enough to make just about any average movie fans' eyes glaze over, it does signal something pretty important.
What Does it Mean?
We know they're deeply invested in their bingeable series' and that they love prestige filmmakers coming in and making features for them (like Alfonso Cuaron's Roma or Rian Johnson's upcoming Knives Out sequels), but they aren't content with what they're already doing. They're making moves to bring us a lot more big-budget movies.
For audiences, that means even more quality storytelling to take in on a regular basis. For filmmakers, it's another outlet to tell their stories. And if we've learned anything from Netflix's output over the years it's that they're not afraid to go weird.
A big part of that is that they're not beholden to a massive opening weekend like the studios currently are. For better or for worse, they seem to be more open to outside-the-box stories. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. (Looking at you, Bright.)
Now, with any big corporation, you're not going to get 100% pure artistic expression. I'm sure there are tons of notes and restrictions placed on their filmmakers, but at the end of the day, having a company with huge pockets like Netflix out there funding giant movies without needing to spend hundreds of millions in marketing to make sure they have a big weekend is only a good thing.
Streaming competition is putting pressure on Netflix to up their output and that means we, the audience, win.
Right now Netflix has big projects with folks like Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot (The Red Room), Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling (The Gray Man), Adam McKay (Don't Look Up), Ryan Reynolds (The Adam Project), and Idris Elba and Regina King (The Harder They Fall), to name just a few. With this exec shakeup, we're only going to get more stuff like this over the next few years.