IMAX screens might just have given traditional Hollywood studios a way to push back against the power of Netflix. A few thoughts.
As much as Netflix probably planned a saga of sorts when it acquired the rights to make films based on C S Lewis’ Narnia series of books, it hadn’t anticipated the one that’s playing out off the screen.
A brief recap. Just ahead of the release of the Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig inked a deal to make Narnia movies for Netflix. Two films are covered by the deal, but come the autumn of this year, doubts were springing up. Since she signed on the dotted line, Gerwig has scored a $1.4bn box office megahit, and she’s reportedly one of a growing line of filmmakers dissatisfied with Netflix eschewing a proper theatrical release in favour of feeding its streaming service.
Add also to that list the likes of Rian Johnson and Guillermo del Toro, whose respective new Knives Out and Frankenstein films will both appear in cinemas in 2025.
In the Netflix corner, it’s hardly ripping up its playbook. Its boss, Ted Sarandos, has consistently reminded the industry that its business is in subscriptions, and getting us to sign up for a monthly Netflix account. If cinema exhibition completely collapsed tomorrow, that’d be very useful for the company’s bottom line. Memorably too, Netflix left a good couple of hundred million of potential dollars on the table when it pulled Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery from cinemas, even though it was bringing in strong box office.
But Sarandos knew that it was the long term that mattered: getting people on direct debit was far more advantageous to him than a single ticket purchase. Over 200m people worldwide now subscribe to his service.
In the other corner though are the studios who continue to spend big on theatrical releases. These past few weeks have demonstrated that if you get a theatrical release right, even in whatever our new normal is, you can still have megahits. Gladiator II, Wicked and Moana 2 are all raking in funds, and have further revenue ahead from their eventual home formats release.
Netflix, thus, finds itself in an unusual position. It knows what it wants, but it’s not necessarily what the talent it works with is after. So much so that reports now suggest that Greta Gerwig is on the verge of exiting the Narnia project altogether, in what would be a very public parting of the ways.
That wouldn’t be fatal to the films, but it wouldn’t do Netflix’s chances of attracting major directorial talent to its projects a lot of good. Gerwig, presumably, was offered a sizeable sum for her work, but she might just be opting for a slightly smaller enormous sum and a theatrical release instead. After all, once you’re at the point of extreme wealth, Netflix’s wages may be less transformative than they once were.
In the nuance of the story though is something quite interesting: that more traditional movie studios may have found a way to push back against Netflix.
At the heart of the issue appears to be IMAX screens. There’s not a studio in town that doesn’t like the idea of the premium ticket price an IMAX screening attracts. Such is the demand for screen space that, memorably, the box office returns of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in 2023 were said to have been damaged because Oppenheimer had pre-snaffled the IMAX screens for the week or two after. Starved of the bigger screen space, box office takings took a hit.
As such, understandably so, the studios investing in big, cinema-focused blockbusters are protective of IMAX screens. Thus, when news broke that Netflix wasn’t just considering a cinema release for its Narnia films – presumably in part to placate Greta Gerwig – but also an IMAX outing, some very hard stares broke out around the industry.
A post here suggests that Netflix’s plan to muscle in on the IMAX world has been met with significant pushback from Disney and Universal in particular. Nobody has commented on the record about any of this, but still, it’d hardly be a surprise. Why should the company whose boss has gone on the record about basically giving zero shits about cinemas, suddenly get the premium space when it suits him?
Beyond that, there might also be a sense that Netflix’s Kryptonite has been exposed. That there’s a pushback against its antithesis towards theatrical exhibition, and it’s affecting the deals it can make with top tier talent.
As much as its subscriber numbers are on the up still, and as much as the money is rolling in, has a turning point been reached? David Fincher and Guillermo del Toro are still working with the streamer, but a few years back, names such as Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, Barry Jenkins and Alfonso Cuaron were making material for Netflix. The well is hardly running dry, but also, there’s clear pushback.
Emerald Fennell’s big budget Wuthering Heights film, with Margot Robbie, was a project Netflix was actively bidding on. But it lost out to a lower offer from Warner Bros (and apparently was surprised it did), that built in a theatrical release. Again, Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson aren’t said to be too happy about Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery being given short shrift in cinemas. And then there’s the possibility that the streamer’s about to lose Gerwig altogether on this key sticking point.
It’s far from panic stations. Netflix still has a war chest that no Hollywood studio can match, and can overpay for talent, even in its new frugal era. But at the very top tier, money might not be enough anymore, especially when competition such as Amazon MGM and Apple are not without deep pockets as well.
Furthermore, the traditional studios are keenly playing their hand that they’ll give a film a cinema release, and shutting out any chance Netflix has to offer IMAX as part of its dealmaking. Why would they give up ground? They’ve finally found a few weapons that actually work against the streamer, and making Netflix rethink its tactics a little.
The status quo is clearly never going back to how it was, say, in 2019, but neither will it go fully the way of the streamers, as we saw in 2020 and 2021. With every major filmmaker or star who turns down the biggest offer and perhaps chooses the best one instead, it just slightly lessens Netflix’s dominance, and at least levels a tiny amount a very broken, lopsided playing field.
As for Narnia? The current plan still seems to be to get the films shooting this Easter. But it still sounds like there might be a problem or two to resolve before Greta Gerwig steps to the back of the wardrobe…
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