Despite not being even three days into October, Netflix has taken it upon itself to make and tee up some pretty big moves, and contrary to their usual modus operandi, most all of them seem entirely sensible from both a business standpoint and the perspective of those who are sick of empty-calorie entertainment. Indeed, from those Umbrella Academy announcements to those Sandman plans, all the way to the shopping list the streamer has been bringing to festival circuits, Netflix is cooking pretty hard right now.
Some things never change, of course, given that the charts continue to be the natural habitat of some middling-to-drowning in-house features that simply know how to tick all the right audience boxes.
Netflix snaps up its third festival darling for a reported $7 million
With Azazel Jacobs’ latest feature His Three Daughters having won the hearts of just about everybody following its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was only a matter of time before the bids started coming hard and fast, with Netflix eventually closing a distribution deal for $7 million.
Starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as three sisters who come back into each other’s lives following the news of their father’s encroaching illness, the kinetic drama follows in the footsteps of Hit Man and Woman of the Hour as a critically acclaimed festival heavyweight snapped up by Netflix for a pretty penny, and with His Three Daughters bringing Netflix’s festival spending to roughly $40 million, the hopes are riding on those future viewership charts now.
The Sandman is ready to full-send its cinematic universe ambitions
Say what you will about the prevalence of comic book adaptations and cinematic universes, but The Sandman is, literally and figuratively, the stuff of dreams, and a confirmed second season apparently isn’t enough to satisfy this budding cinematic serial’s hunger.
Thanks to the end of the WGA strike, The Sandman has sprung to life with a wide range of casting calls and season two teases, the latter of which implicate a scope that goes far beyond the Netflix series and such companion pieces as Dead Boy Detectives. Indeed, not everything needs a cinematic universe, but giving one to the show that gave us the episode “24/7” is probably one of the best conceivable ideas out there.
Reptile crashed and burned with critics, so obviously it’s king of the charts right now
A crime thriller starring Benicio del Toro and Alicia Silverstone should never be as lackluster as Reptile ended up being, and yet, judging by the 44% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 53 on Metacritic, it somehow managed to subvert expectations in the worst way.
Of course, we all know the drill by now; Netflix puts out a movie that, at best, treads water from a critical perspective, it has just enough endorphin-evoking bells and whistles (such as del Toro, Silverstone, its crime genre, and Justin Timberlake) to grab audience interest, and immediately rockets up the Top 10 in several different markets (in Reptile‘s case, that acclimation came about in 93 different countries); we’ll repeat this refresher in roughly a month when Woefully Generic Untitled Action Thriller hits the queues.
The other Top 10 heavyweight is apparently better than Reptile, but compensates for this chart sin by being an international feature
It’s not just undesirable reviews that make a movie ripe for the Top 10 charts; other factors to consider include what genre it belongs to (if you’re a rom-com, action thriller, or true crime series, you’re golden), and whether it comes from overseas or not (if you’re Spanish or Korean, welcome aboard).
Nowhere, Albert Pintó’s Spanish-language survival thriller in which a pregnant woman escapes from a future-set, fascist Spain in a shipping container that threatens to fall apart at any second, meets one and a half of those recommendations, and so has naturally gone on to make a name for itself in the Top 10 in almost 90 different territories. It’s apparently only a bit better than Reptile to boot, making Nowhere a true Netflix utilitarian, which is perhaps the worst phrase that will ever come out my mouth for the foreseeable future.
Strap in, folks; season four of The Umbrella Academy lands next year
Few shows can claim to have extended past their source material, but The Umbrella Academy has somehow pulled it off, given that the fourth volume of Gerard Way’s comic book remains unreleased despite most all of its plotlines having shown up in season three.
And the superheroic Netflix hit looks all but ready to lap its source comic in this department, with the show’s official Twitter account having announced that the fourth and final season of Hargreeves shenanigans will land sometime in 2024.
It’s an announcement that brings with it impatience for the long wait, excitement for more adventures with Klaus, Vanya and company, and bittersweetness for this being the final ride for these beloved siblings. We’ll leave you to navigate those feelings on your own, as we’ll be too busy doing the same.