Netflix: Coming Sooner to a Theater Near You

'Knives Out 2' on a big screen? The math says yes

(Illustration by Haley Kluge; Patrik Giardino)

A few months back, I heard a juicy tidbit that execs at Netflix were worried about Knives Out 2. Specifically, they had concerns that, given the $450 million price tag for the two sequels, that Netflix couldn’t make its money back. This was after Red Notice and Don’t Look Up broke viewership records for the streamer, and Netflix still had concerns. The implication being that big budget films can’t justify their budgets on streaming alone.

So I’m going to call my shot in today’s article:

In the near future, the major film studios, including the streamers, will release their medium-to-big budget films in theaters.

In other words, after a chaotic last two years, we’ll finally achieve consensus in the feature film business. Specifically, the major studios (and this includes Netflix) will keep their moderately priced films — films that roughly cost more than $50 million dollars to make — in theaters for 45 days before streaming them on their wholly owned streamers. And they’ll likely align on this before the year is out.

Typing that out, it doesn’t seem that bold. But consider this would mean Netflix breaking its historic aversion to theaters.