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Netflix’s newest crowd-pleaser, Gray Manreported $200 million — a price tag similar of the Doctor Strange in Madness’ Multiverse. An action spy thriller starring Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas and Chris Evans, The Gray Man is Directed by Joe and Anthony Russothe brothers behind some of the biggest successes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Avengers: Endgame. In other words, it was designed to succeed, and it did. The film almost immediately became the top movie on the service in 92 countries. Surely, this is what Ted Sarandos dreamed of.
Naturally, Netflix want more.
On Tuesday, less than a week after the series premiered on Netflix, the streamer announced that the sequel to The Gray Man was made, as well as a spin-off movie. The company says these efforts are part of what Netflix hopes will become “a major spy franchise” —a cinematic universe The Verge boldly calls “50 shades of gray men. “
Listen, there’s never a good reason to complain about adding Ryan Gosling to one’s living room, but this is ridiculous. Gray Man fine, but preferably the kind of movie you’re glad you downloaded to your iPad six hours before your flight. Also, you may have seen it before; it only has the words “Mission” “Impossible” or “Bourne” in the title. There will never be too many fun spy thrillers, but they don’t all need to be part of the franchise. And if they do, can we please prioritize sequel of Old Guardian and Atomic Blonde? Or at least make Charlize Theron and Gosling fight in some crossover event?
But in the end, this isn’t really about the quality of the franchise, it’s about Netflix having the franchise. Now that streamers are losing – or losing access to long-standing cinematic universes like Marvel, DC or Lucasfilm, it needs more. Netflix is reduce subscribers, and if it really wants to compete with the likes of Disney+ and HBO Max in the long run, it will have to have the properties that those services have. “We wanted our own version of Star Wars or our own version of Harry Potter,” said Netflix vice president Matthew Thunell told Reuters recently, “and we’re working really hard to build on that.” Hence, the Brooding Gosling Cinematic Universe.
Of course, it’s not just Gos. There is also a reality series have inspiration from Squid gameand series Pull out the knife film that Rian Johnson is working on. Game of Thrones Hosts David Benioff and DB Weiss are said to be adapting Three-body problem, the first book in Liu Cixin’s sci-fi trilogy. The list goes on. Are all these trivially bad? Chances are some will be pretty good. But build a franchise with such a devoted fan base that they will continue to pay $15 per month just to get access to five. This is what my colleague Brian Barrett talked about when he called Disney + a “jumper” on the day it was released. Netflix may one day get that, but it also needs customers now if it hopes to last long enough to build it.
Of course, Netflix isn’t the only one playing this game. This strategy is also why Amazon make a Lord of the Rings recital. And there are hints about it in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Isaac Asimov Establish or ask Steven Spielberg to do it Great stories. The difference is that video streaming isn’t Amazon or Apple’s only business. They certainly want a cinematic universe of their own, but they may not need it to survive. Netflix does.
