Why Netflix is Buying Knives Out
Is the$400 million price tag for Knives Out 2 & 3 too much?
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out became one of the surprise hits of 2019. Such success is rare nowadays when a film is not based on a known property. Even with its all-star cast, this plot twisting murder mystery that satirically pokes at current political events was not a sure hit when it got the green light.
The film eventually made $311 million at the box office and garnered the Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay—a strong enough showing that would put Knives Out 2 on the horizon. We recently learned that Netflix is paying over $400 million for the two sequels. That’s an awful massive contract considering the price for each would only be $100 million shy of what the first film made. Why so much money?
The answer is simple: Desperation.
The age of Netflix being the king of exclusive content is over. When they first debuted House of Cards, it was a revolutionary step forward in entertainment shift’s from traditional channels to online viewing. For years, they also took chances on big films to release at opportune moments—survival horror Bird Box and urban fantasy Bright both premiered on Christmas Day to massively high viewing numbers.
It used to be that Netflix’s only real competition was Amazon. Now they also have to compete with Disney+, HBOMax, Criterion, Shudder, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, and a host of others. It’s even more worrisome for Netflix that a lot of these new platforms are studio-backed, meaning there’s a stockpile of original properties being released that will ever make its way to Netflix.
It does seem that Netflix has been preparing for this eventuality. At this very juncture, half of their content is original programming. In the past three years, Mank, The Irishman, Roma, and Marriage Story, all garnered prestige at the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, they did little to help the viewership gain.
Naturally, besides the Oscars allocates, Netflix has also been on a hunt for big new releases. The new James Bond—No Time To Die and Godzilla vs. Kong were both considered. But major studios no longer depended on streaming platforms to host their content. Warner Bros ultimately kept Godzilla vs. Kong for their own HBOMax, Paramount pushed SpongeBob: Sponge on the Run to Paramount+, and Disney pushed Soul to Disney+.
While Netflix is still a great place for original content, it’s going to take a lot more than Bad Trip and a few episodes of Lucifer to bring in the views.
Will Knives Out 2 be the answer? We’ll just have to see.
