Netflix has money to burn, as evidenced by the $200+ million funneled into the Russo brothers’ upcoming espionage epic The Gray Man, which is poised to become the latest blockbuster original to split opinion between critics and fans right down the middle, at least based on its current trajectory.
While the globetrotting spy saga could indeed launch a multi-film franchise that spins out into prequels, sequels, and TV shows, which is also the plan with the Russo-backed Extraction, the company has bigger things in mind. It’s no secret that Netflix doesn’t quite have a top-tier marquee property on the feature film side of things, similar to how Stranger Things operates in the episodic landscape.
It’s a search that’s been going on for a while, and in an interview with Reuters, vice president Matthew Thunell confirmed that he will not rest until something monolithic emerges from the platform’s relentless churn of content.
“We want to have our version of Star Wars or our version of Harry Potter, and we’re working very hard to build that. But those are not built overnight. At a traditional studio, there are these big walls between the feature team and animation team and series team. Because Netflix is a very young organization, those walls just never had time to be built.”
In all honesty, there’s nothing that jumps out as a prime Netflix candidate to become an A-grade brand that spans generation and cultivates a vociferous fanbase all over the world from every demographic. Like Thunell said, though, these things don’t happen quickly, even if his two benchmarks were pretty much overnight cinematic sensations.