The curious case of The Water Man imminently leaving Netflix created a fascinating scenario where a movie that released in virtually every corner of the world as an original feature was being removed from the one country where it wasn’t. It seemed like an isolated incident, but Shooter is about to go one better.
The three-season episodic reboot of the thoroughly tedious Mark Wahlberg actioner originally aired on the USA Network, with the streaming service acquiring the distribution rights in the United States as part of a pre-agreed licensing deal with the channel. However, in every other country where Shooter was available, it was branded as an exclusive series.
Once the four-year domestic deal lapsed this past June, Shooter was gone from the Stateside content library, and it’s now been confirmed that the rest of the world will be robbed of the privilege of seeing Ryan Phillipe take out a raft of suspected targets before the end of next month.
It would be a surprise if anyone was to mourn the loss of Shooter given that it wasn’t greeted particularly enthusiastically be either critics or audiences, and it may yet end up on Paramount Plus given the studio’s involvement through its television division.
That being said, it’s becoming an increasingly regular occurrence for projects that may or may not be Netflix OGs depending entirely on your location to suddenly announce they’ll be vanishing without a trace imminently, yet another reminder that the world of small print and red tape can be confusing at the best of times.