The pandemic may have seismically disrupted moviegoing, but business is booming for the world’s largest streaming service. Netflix’s ability to keep releasing buzzy films and franchises has been mostly unhampered by the ongoing health crisis. Case in point: the platform is making good on its promise to release new movies every week in 2021, and its slate is impressive.
Netflix began teasing its game plan for weekly new films back in October, with national commercial spots. This week, the streamer released a celebrity-laden sizzle reel showcasing the likes of Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Adams, and Chris Hemsworth — all plugging their respective projects.
“What I love about movies is they can make you feel every emotion,” Regina King said, teasing her Western The Harder They Fall, which also stars Idris Elba and Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors.
“I love showing people what a superhero can look like,” quipped Octavia Spencer, of her new film Thunder Force. “I like making any movie where I get to throw stuff,” added McCarthy, her co-star.
Halle Berry and Lin-Manuel Miranda are each making their directorial debuts for Netflix. She helmed an MMA drama titled Bruised, which screened as a work-in-progress at the Toronto Film Festival and landed a multi-million dollar distribution deal with the streamer. He adapted Jonathan Larson’s musical Tick, Tick… Boom! into a feature film starring Andrew Garfield.
The list of buzzy projects goes on: Amy Adams stars in a thriller called The Woman in the Window. Gadot, Reynolds, and Johnson teamed up for a big-budget heist film titled Red Notice. Hemsworth is in a slick-looking flick called Escape from Spiderhead, based on a George Saunders short story, in which the actor drives a speedboat.
Jennifer Garner made a kids’ movie called Yes Day, which includes a scene where a family drives through a carwash with the windows down. Zany! Netflix’s slate also includes the culmination of a couple of homegrown, super-popular franchises: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kissing Booth.
Netflix’s massive movie push — there are 71 titles across all genres programmed for 2021 — comes at a moment when competitors in the streaming space are battling for eyeballs (and thus subscription dollars). Famously, Warner Bros. announced that its entire 2021 movie slate would debut on HBO Max and in cinemas simultaneously. Notably, that decision has spurred all sorts of backlash and hand-wringing about the death of movie theaters. But as Netflix’s film announcement today makes clear, the services positioned to nimbly navigate this unprecedented moment in history are the ones most likely to reign in the future.
The full slate is below:
8 Rue de l’Humanité*
A Boy Called Christmas
A Castle for Christmas
Afterlife of the Party
Army of the Dead
Awake
A Week Away
A Winter’s Tale from Shaun the Sheep**
Back to the Outback
Bad Trip
Beauty
Blonde
Blood Red Sky*
Bombay Rose
Beckett
Bruised
Concrete Cowboy
Don’t Look Up
Double Dad*
Escape from Spiderhead
Fear Street Trilogy
Fever Dream*
Finding ‘Ohana (January 29)
Fuimos Canciones*
I Care A Lot (February 19)**
Intrusion
Kate
Love Hard
Malcolm & Marie (February 5)
Monster
Moxie (March 3)
Munich*
Nightbooks
Night Teeth
No One Gets Out Alive
O2*
Outside the Wire (January 15)
Penguin Bloom (January 27)**
Pieces of Woman (January 7)
Red Notice
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Robin Robin
Skater Girl
Stowaway**
Sweet Girl
The Dig (January 29)
The Guilty
The Hand of God*
The Harder They Fall
The Kissing Booth 3
The Last Letter from Your Lover**
The Last Mercenary*
The Loud House Movie
The Power of the Dog
The Princess Switch 3
There’s Someone Inside Your House
The Starling
The Swarm*
The White Tiger (January 22)
The Woman in the Window
Things Heard and Seen
Thunder Force
tick, tick...BOOM!
To All The Boys: Always and Forever
Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans
Untitled Alexandre Moratto*
Untitled Graham King
Untitled Alicia Keys Rom-Com
Wish Dragon
YES DAY
*non-English language
**not available globally
