As Netflix continues to roll out shows and movies and original content, it is easy to lose track of all the potential things that are out there. In one of the areas where they seem to be making an extraordinary investment of resources is in the arena of science fiction films. If you look at the current listing in that category, you will find all kinds of offerings, which is how I found the film Spectral.
The basic plot of Spectral is Black Hawk Down, meets a ghost story with some science thrown in on the back end to clean it all up. There is a degree to which it could easily feel like one of the SyFy movies where things are super cheesy and the closest thing to a quality actor was involved in a CW program 10 years ago. But in this case, the movie has a pretty decent cast, led by James Badge Dale, who is a guy that you will recognize but not really from where. (Hints: he is in Iron Man 3 and 13 Hours.) It also has character actor Bruce Greenwood as the military leader and Emily Mortimer as the mandatory lady scientist. (You want to make an interesting script Hollywood? Make the dudes the scientist and cast some tough as nails lady to be the leader of the military unit.) And on the whole, it is a decent science fiction film. The revelations around the supernatural parts seem forced at points but believable in the world that they have set up. Overall, I would give the movie a generous 7 out of 10 Nerds.
But this film, its production and how it wound up on Netflix is worth discussing.
Spectral was created with every intention of it being a major film released in the general movie market like any other film that you are familiar with. But after filming in Hungary, the movie was under production for a year and as they moved closer to their scheduled release date, Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures made the decision to not release it but instead sell it to Netflix. This film isn’t the first movie that has gone down this path, being produced for a theatrical release only to eventually be sold to Netflix. And that trend has some interesting implications.
Studios might make chances on smaller films. Over the last 10 years, we have seen the trend in movies to be working towards the extremes. Studios make massive multi-hundred million dollar budget films and others make cheap as possible independent films. Increasingly, there has been no middle ground of a 40-50 million dollar films, which is probably the range that Spectral had in production. So, this approach may allow the studio to create the film and, if they don’t think they can recoup their costs, sell it to the growing streaming market of Amazon, Netflix and Hulu.
Netflix can see itself as a distributor, as well as a content creator. As Hulu and Amazon have been growing in strength, often taking titles out of the Netflix catalog, people have wondered about Netflix’s survival. Clearly, they have pushed hard to be a place for original content and some of that is quite good. But this approach also would allow a studio to take a guaranteed payday from Netflix versus taking a chance on what would happen in the box office release. Spectral was scheduled for an August release, which feels like a graveyard time for a movie release. Even if the movie had been well reviewed, it likely would not have done well financially. And, who knows what the deal with Netflix really looked like? Potentially, the studio and distributors are making something on the backend with every viewing of the film. (Not likely, given Netflix’s propensity to not release anything resembling a ratings or viewership metric, but it could be.)
Netflix can position itself to be the source for science fiction and fantasy movies. Let’s be honest, as much as superheroes rule the cinematic screens right now, fantasy and hard science fiction have been lost as a genre, in part because studios have said you need to be creating Star Wars/Star Trek level films or they haven’t made them. This approach would let the industry make a mid-tier movie that could be compelling, tell a good story and still make a profit. If the only time we are going to see fantasy is if Peter Jackson is attached, that is a loss for all of us. The market is likely small for swords and sorcery movies but they still can find an audience and this may be a way for that genre to continue.
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