This week’s release of Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” (read our review) puts many of Netflix’s problems into sharp focus. Reportedly costing around $166 million to make for both films, arguably much less expensive than some big Marvel and “Star Wars” that cost around $200 million each, it’s still a significant figure for movies that have been met with massive critical derision. Part Two, ‘The Scargiver,’ currently sits at a very dismal 13% score on Rotten Tomatoes; part One, ‘A Child Of Fire,’ didn’t fare much better with a 21% RT score. For a company often accused of having little quality control and letting filmmakers indulge themselves with huge budgets and aimless movies, Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” movies are deeply emblematic of this reputation: letting filmmakers coast with no oversight.
It’s a notorious issue that critics are often talking about, and reportedly part of the problem that new Netflix chief Dan Lin, who comes in replacing Scott Stuber, has been supposedly part of the exact problem he’s been hired to fix. When Lin was first hired, reports addressed these very issues. The new film exec—who had led his successful production company Rideback and almost got the coveted DC Studios gig before backing out on his own volition— was said to have gotten the gig, in part because he was ruthlessly candid with Netflix, telling the streamers they had a quality control problem and their movies were too costly given the product (“movies were not great, and the financials didn’t add up,” were what one source quoted Lin as candidly telling the streamer execs).
In fact, a more recent New York Times article about Lin’s hiring and new strategy at Netflix was titled “Netflix’s New Film Strategy: More About the Audience, Less About Auteurs.” Breaking down some of the changes Lin was bringing to the company, the article suggested changes would include less latitude for filmmakers and dialing back on huge upfront deals for name directors. “The aim is to make Netflix’s movies better, cheaper, and less frequent[ly],” the Times reported.
While no one from the streaming company commented on the record for the article, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has taken issue with some of it. On Thursday’s Netflix Q1 earnings call (via Indiewire), Sarandos refuted the claim of making fewer movies.
“That was not a quote from Dan, and I would say that—nor did we participate in that article— there is no appetite to make fewer films,” Sarandos said in response to those claims. “But there is an unlimited appetite to make better films always; even though we have made and are making great films, we want to make them better, of course.”
Lin produced hit movies like “Aladdin,” and “The LEGO Movie” franchise, and since he took over in April, there have been a few layoffs at Netflix, a sign that he is already making his reorganizational presence known.
The Times article also reported that Lin’s mandate would be to improve the quality of the movies and produce a broader spectrum of films to appeal to a more varied group of their some 260-million subscribers.
Sarandos did not push back on any other claims in the article and praised Line, who has produced Netflix projects like the live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series and the Oscar-nominated “The Two Popes” drama.
“We’re super excited to have Dan join the company. He just joined us a couple of weeks ago, and he joined us running 100 miles an hour,” Sarandos said. “Bela [Bajaria] has said this publicly: our strategy remains variety and quality, and she’s doing an amazing job bringing new, fresh thinking to our content and our content organization; bringing Dan on board is a great example of that. We want to have a lot of movies; we want them to thrill our audiences. They all have different tastes, and we want them to be great. So we take a very audience-centric view of what quality is, and Dan knows that from having produced for us.”
The article also revealed that Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow had walked away from the Netflix film “Aurora,” based on David Koepp’s apocalyptic novel, in a possible sign of belt-tightening and the company perhaps being more controlling than usual with films in development.
The Times makes an interesting point that several key filmmakers who had made movies for Netflix— Martin Scorsese with “The Irishman,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” Scott Cooper’s “The Pale Blue Eye”— have all decided to make their follow-up films with other studios, perhaps a sign that changes were afoot at Netflix before Lin recently began, either creative, financial or both.
How far Netflix’s habits will change is unclear, but Lin seems tasked and poised to bring an evolution to the company culture.
