Ralph Glorioso
Netflix released its new blockbuster film, Red Notice a week ago, which has set reviews sky-rocketing. But many critics claim to have seen the charade of a hunky muscle man, suave thief and fast-talking sidekick before, which sends them on a nostalgic trip.
Today it’s not the re-modelling of screens from previous better action scenes that we’d like to point out but the fact that Netflix is slowly killing cinematic blockbusters. Older blockbuster films thrived on the big screen, while Red Notice is only limited to television screens.
Netflix’s restriction of the movie to a week run on 750 cinema screens in the US is a slight buzzkill to the massive big screen scales of other blockbuster films such as Marvel’s Eternals that is screening on 4090 movie screens across the US. As a result, Red Notice only grossed $1 million at the US box office before being launched on Netflix.
Netflix’s decision to maximize its film on TV and phone screens is perhaps an unfortunate move to making Red Notice join a sad list of cliched Netflix action movies from past recent years. Netflix’s act to make their blockbusters wow with spectacle has consisted of upscaling the budget each time to enhance quality. And the company spared no expense to recruit the best onscreen talent.
So, Red Notice is by far the most extravagant Netflix original film production, costing about $200 million to make. The movie’s big shot actors, Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot each cashed $20 million from Netflix. The skyrocketing project production budget made Universal flinch, thus ultimately making it up to Netflix to meet its cost.
The surprising bit, however, is that with such a Netflix power move, Red Notice received such a restricted cinematic release.
