Netflix’s $367 million movie The Electric State has fallen flat, but does the streamer really care?

NEW YORK – Netflix spent more than US$275 million (S$367 million) to make The Electric State, a science-fiction action adventure film starring British actress Millie Bobby Brown, American actor Chris Pratt and a slew of sentient robots.

Had it opened in theatres, instead of on its service as it did on March 14, the film would almost certainly be declared a giant disappointment.

Reviews have been dismal. And although it debuted at No. 1 on the streaming giant’s weekly chart of most-watched movies, it had far fewer views (25.2 million) than other expensive features, including 2022’s The Gray Man (96.5 million), which was made by the same directors, American brothers Joe and Anthony Russo.

But there was little hand-wringing inside Netflix this past week. No marketing chief was blamed. No production executive packed up her office.

Instead, The Electric State demonstrates how different Netflix is from traditional studios – and how easily the company can spend so much for a middling result without Wall Street’s noticing. (Its stock was up slightly this past week.)

The truth is, no one piece of content moves the needle at Netflix in either direction.

The South Korean series Squid Game 2 (2024) was the most-watched title in the company’s most recent engagement report, with 87 million views, but it accounted for only 0.7 per cent of total viewing.

Rather, the US$18 billion that the company spends each year on movies and shows is meant to reach a worldwide audience with different tastes and interests. The budget for The Electric State represents 1.5 per cent of what the company will spend on content in 2025.

“It’s comical to me that Hollywood and the press obsess over Netflix’s mistakes while they have one of the most viral global hits in Adolescence right now at a nothing budget,” said Mr Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with Lightshed Partners.

He was referring to a distressing – and zeitgeisty – four-part British series about a teenage boy accused of murder that has generated 24.3 million views. “It’s all about a portfolio approach to content,” he added.

Netflix and the Russo brothers declined to comment for this article.

Supposedly, quality is now king at Netflix. “With more than 700 million people watching, we can’t just be one thing. We need to be the best version of everything,” Ms Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said at an event in January showcasing the company’s 2025 line-up.

And more recently, she said she would greenlight The Electric State all over again. Among reviewers, the film has a 15 per cent positive rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. Among the public, it has a 71 per cent positive rating.

Netflix acquired The Electric State in 2022 after film studio Universal baulked at the reported US$200 million price tag. Those costs ballooned in part because of the amount of special effects involved and the extensive up-front bonuses paid to the film’s stars and directors.

That kind of spending on a big-budget, little-known piece of intellectual property may be more rare in Netflix’s future.

The company’s new film chief, Mr Dan Lin, is cutting costs where he can but still spending lavishly on highly coveted projects. He plunked down a healthy chunk for American director Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia and tried to land British film-maker Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights by offering US$150 million. He lost out to Warner Bros, which offered to give the film starring Australian actress Margot Robbie a wide theatrical release.

Netflix is still doing plenty of business with the Russo brothers too. Over the years, the pair have given the company some of its biggest hits, including Gray Man and the Extraction franchise (2020 to present).

The Russos’ production company, AGBO, is set to begin filming The Whisper Man, a crime thriller starring American actors Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan, in 2025, and an Extraction television series is also in the works.

The Electric State hit the streaming service just as Hollywood seems to be undergoing an identity crisis.

Moviegoers say they want original ideas, but the public keeps rejecting them. The weekend before, two original stories – action thriller Novocaine starring American actor Jack Quaid, and spy thriller Black Bag starring Australian actress Cate Blanchett and German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender – headlined the slowest moviegoing weekend of 2025.

Even franchise fare such as Captain America: Brave New World (2025) and Paddington In Peru (2024) is not matching the grosses of its predecessors.

Hollywood was hopeful that 2025 would be the year the box office would come roaring back to its pre-pandemic levels, but so far, it is trailing 2024 by 5 per cent and 2019 by 38 per cent.

Peter Newman, a film producer and professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said The Electric State and Netflix’s approach to content relied more on analytics than overall taste, a factor that contributed to the disparity between the critics’ reviews and the audience’s reception of the movie.

“One could make the case that they have dumbed down the audience to such an extent that that’s what they want,” Newman said. “Maybe they want McDonald’s instead of Peter Luger.” NYTIMES