Executives at Netflix are reportedly stunned that they couldn’t acquire Saltburn director Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation.
Given that Warner Bros hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the past few years, we can’t quite call this a ‘feel good’ story, but we feel comfortable dubbing it a ‘victory for cinema’.
In case you haven’t been following this one, it concerns the studio destination for director Emerald Fennell’s next project: a star-filled updating of Emily Brontë’s brooding gothic tragedy, Wuthering Heights.
Fennell is a filmmaker in demand following her Oscar-winning screenplay for 2021’s Promising Young Woman and then the immense pop culture splash made by last year’s Saltburn. When it became clear that she’d next be coating a literary classic (Wuthering Heights) with her own unique brand of provocative pop-glitz, interest in the project heightened further. Then, when Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi came on board as the doomed lovers, Cathy and Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights became one of the most in-demand projects in Hollywood.
Naturally, Netflix wanted the film, and was likely pretty confident of getting it, given that its offer was said to be $150m – more than twice the amount of the eventual winning bid, with that coming from Warner Bros at $70m. The latter studio’s promise to give the film a wide theatrical release is said to have sealed the deal, even beating off a lucrative deal from Amazon MGM which also featured a commitment to a major theatrical push.
In short, what seems to have won the day here is a commitment from the film’s producers to ensure as many people as possible see the film inside a cinema, even if it makes everybody’s bank balances considerably lighter. And according to Variety, that’s a factor that the folks at Netflix are struggling to comprehend. The outlet is reporting (via an unnamed ‘top agent’) that folks at the streamer are ‘shocked’ ‘because obviously they had outbid [every other studio] for so long’ that securing any project they wanted had become normalised.
Will the snub spark reflection about its efforts to essentially drive cinemas out of business? Probably not. But the reported reaction at Netflix will surely teach the streamer that money can’t buy you everything. Maybe it’ll also embolden other filmmakers to turn down Netflix’s offers in favour of those in service of cinema. That possibility will only increase should Wuthering Heights become a big hit.
More as we get it.
