’Tis the season to push high-profile movie projects in the streaming-video business, it would appear, given the slate previews everyone in Hollywood and beyond is circulating of a sudden.
NBC and Peacock, of course, are making much of Marry Me – the Jennifer Lopez-Owen Wilson rom-com debuting simultaneously on the streaming service and in theaters next weekend – along with a few other upcoming projects amid all the endless advertising around the nearly endless Olympics broadcasts.
Meanwhile, all the Hollywood studios, the trades told us this week, have lined up 71 films, combined, for 2022. That’s far fewer than whatever counts as “usual” after two years of Not Usual, but includes more Batman, Black Panther, Spider-Man, and (hey, what’s this?) another Avatar? Holy James Cameron! Those should do well.
Also read: What $19 Billion Gets You: Netflix Previews Entire 2022 Film Slate
The studio list is also up a lot from 2021’s pandemic-strangled 57 or even worse, 2020’s 34. And it’ll be a crucial year for the studios, which are going to be measuring two things: a) is the exhibition business finally back(ish), and b) how many movies should they debut on streaming first or at least simultaneously with a theatrical release?
It’s safe to say, as the virus’ impacts accordion in and out, that studio release plans are probably written in pencil rather than permanent ink.
Disney’s latest family-friendly animated project, Turning Red, already has magically turned into a streaming-only release. That has prompted existential angst among the Pixarians about whether their painstakingly made, Oscar-winning creations still matter to the Mouse House brain trust in a way that only a 4,000-screen theatrical release can signify.
Apple, of course, has been running those amusing TV Plus ads featuring a cocooning Jon Hamm watching all the stars in TV Plus shows that feature “everyone but Jon Hamm,” even Snoopy (Good grief!).
And then there’s Netflix, which just launched a supercut trailer previewing more than 20 of its films coming to the platform this year. The trailer opens with Jennifer Lopez proclaiming, seemingly in the middle of her movie The Mother, that “Tonight Is movie night.”
The trailer sprinkles numerous in-trailer comments from stars in the middle of their big features, helping directly pitch the Netflix message. The list includes Chris Hemsworth in Spiderhead, Ryan Gosling in the Russo Brothers The Gray Man, Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington in The School for Good and Evil, and Millie Bobbie Brown in Enola Holmes 2, among others. You get the idea.
The discomfiting part for the rest of Hollywood is this star-stuffed trailer represents only about third of the 68 of the more than 80 movies the company has slated for 2022. (Netflix outlines its full 2022 slate here.) The trailer says “New Movies. Every Week,” though technically, the company’s planned slate translates to “New Movies. About Every Five Days.”
Netflix also just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its first original show, Lillehammer, featuring Steve Van Zandt, the Bruce Springsteen sideman turned actor-producer in an amusing, if slight, fish-out-of-water series.
The company has come a long way since, churning out hundreds of features and series in the intervening decade at an accelerating pace. This week, the company will get a different measure of its 2021 slate, as we await Tuesday morning’s announcement of Oscar nominations.
Netflix’s most likely Oscar contender, Jane Campion’s gorgeous and brutal Western The Power of the Dog, likely will scoop up the most nominations of any Netflix project ever, including nods for director, cinematographer, best picture and three acting categories (Benedict Cumberbatch, Cody Smit-McPhee, and Kirsten Dunst, and maybe Jesse Plemons too).
Several other projects seem likely to get some love too, as has been the case for a few years now for the company’s contenders.
And now it looks like the company’s getting ready for another bumper crop of possibilities. Clearly, the supercut trailer had been months in the making, (or more disturbingly, maybe the latest advance in deep fakes put all those stars talking ad stuff in mid-movie). But the trailer also shows some of the star power Netflix can marshal, backed by a focused marketing approach that reinforces Netflix as the destination service among all the streaming competitors.
Regardless, the ad suggests, like so much else, that Netflix is still dictating the order of battle in the streaming wars, even after the brutal 24-percent slide the company’s shares took following a disappointing Jan. 20 earnings call.
Yes, it might be worth wondering, as investors suddenly are, whether Netflix can sustain a pace of more than 80features a year indefinitely, especially when it’s added to seemingly countless other episodic and limited run series, reality shows, comedy specials and much else.
Maybe that Total Addressable Market isn’t as big as people thought. But for now, as yet another phalanx of high-profile projects get ready to land, we still have to ask: Is Hollywood doing enough to keep up?
