As a streaming service as opposed to a traditional studio, you wouldn’t have thought Netflix would be getting into the business of leaving completed movies stuck in purgatory awaiting release dates, but The Mothership has been languishing in stasis longer than most.
In the last few months alone, we’ve seen some high-profile titles quietly getting pushed back into 2024, a list that includes Millie Bobby Brown’s fantasy adventure Damsel, Adam Sandler’s hotly-anticipated return to dramatic territory in Spaceman, Kevin Hart’s action comedy Lift, and the Nicole Kidman-fronted steamy thriller A Family Affair to name but four.
However, The Mothership has been hanging around waiting for the okay since well before any of those aforementioned features even entered production. In fact, the sci-fi blockbuster was first unveiled as part of the 2022 preview slate as noted by What’s on Netflix, but wasn’t even included in the sizzle reel for this year. Shooting wrapped way back in the summer of 2021, and yet Netflix seems to have been sitting on it without even coming close to hinting at a debut on-demand.
The calendar for the rest of the year seems pretty firmed up – especially when the platform is shunting back films that were originally scheduled to drop before the end of December – so it’s looking increasingly likely that writer and director Matthew Charman’s tale starring Academy Award winner Halle Berry won’t be making it to screens until 2024.
The story finds the actress’ single mother struggling to hold things together a year after her husband mysteriously vanishes into thin air, only for she and her children to unearth an extraterrestrial object hidden beneath their home that could hold the answers to all of the mysteries hanging over them. It sounds solid, the only real question is when we’ll actually be able to see it.