In 2021, Netflix will release a new film every week. The streaming service, which has roughly 193 million subscribers, will showcase mostly original productions as well as a number of films acquired by the company.
On Tuesday, the service released a sizzle reel featuring Dwayne Johnson, Melissa McCarthy, Halle Berry, Jason Momoa, Amy Adams, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Hemsworth and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will appear in original films over the next year.
Films include the big-budget heist film Red Notice with Gal Gadot, Johnson, and Reynolds; the Western The Harder They Fall with Regina King, Idris Elba and Lovecraft County star Jonathan Majors; The Woman in The Window with Adams; Zach Snyder’s Army of the Dead; the musical Tick, Tick … Boom! with Lin-Manuel Miranda; and the political satire Don’t Look Up with Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalamet, Kid Cudi and Meryl Streep.
Netflix, which has been unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, has managed to circumvent the chaos that studios have encountered with film delays and theater closings. With vaccine rollouts expected to take longer than anticipated, streaming services are in a unique position to profit from ongoing lockdowns.
As an example, Fear Street, a film trilogy based on the book series of the same name, will be released in quick succession over the course of three months. The films, which were being developed by 20th Century Fox before it was taken over by Disney, were acquired by Netflix in August.
Netflix has also acquired Wish Dragon from Sony Pictures Animation, a film developed by the studio behind the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Voiced by John Cho, Constance Wu, Will Yun Lee, and Jimmy O. Yang, the film was expected to receive a major theatrical release before the pandemic.
Last July, Netflix reported that it had added 26 million subscribers during the first half of the year — 10 million in the first quarter and nearly 16 million in the second. The streaming service was also projected to generate $6.4 billion in third-quarter revenues, up more than 20% from the same period in 2019.
Source: Variety