Streaming giant Netflix has injected $8 billion into their releases for 2018 as the company continues to grow. The Science Fiction genre is featuring prominently in their feature film releases so far this year with the critically panned Cloverfield Paradox and Mute being released in February.
The trend looks set to continue with Alex Garland’s Sci-Fi Horror Annihilation heading Straight-to-Netflix on the 12th of March. The film is an adaptation of the first novel from Jeff VanderMeer’s Sci-Fi series Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy.
Garland sprung to literary fame in 1996 with his debut novel The Beach. John Hodge, a regular writer for Danny Boyle, joined Garland in adapting the screenplay with it going on to be one of the most iconic film releases in 2000. Garland went on to write for Boyle twice more for 28 Days Later (2002) and Sunshine (2007). In 2009 he adapted Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go which starred an up and coming Andrew Garfield. After 6 years of development, Garland joined the comic book world with future cult classic Dredd being released in 2012.
2015 was Garland’s year with his outstanding directorial debut Ex Machina. Nominations flooded in from all over the film industry for the slow burn artificial intelligence drama. It provided one of the Oscars biggest shocks by picking up the award for best visual effects beating the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you haven’t seen the film I highly recommend it. Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s score matches the mood of the film perfectly and I’m glad to see their return for Annihilation. Oscar Isaac, with his Stanley Kubrick inspired beard, provides a chilling performance as CEO Nathan Bateman.
With a consistently excellent writing background in British Sci-Fi releases it baffles me that Paramount Pictures haven’t given Garland’s Annihilation a UK theatrical run. After clashing with the studio over character traits and the ending, Garland and Executive Producer Scott Rudin have had to make do with a North American and Chinese only theatrical release. Paramount were so worried about their $55 million production budget they struck a multi-million deal with Netflix to cover worldwide distribution to lessen the chance of a loss. The star power of Natalie Portman and the strong female support cast clearly wasn’t enough for the studio to show belief that the film would put “bums on seats”.
As 2017 came to an end Netflix had an estimated 117.6 million subscribers and in the past few days, the company has declared an estimated worth of $130 billion. The idea that your work can be instantly available to a worldwide mainstream audience will appeal to some filmmakers but not to all of them.
To paraphrase Garland, in an interview with Collider, he was disappointed in the overall outcome but pleased the film got a theatrical release (albeit limited). The reach of Netflix will undeniably help Annihilation but Garland and the crew created the film to be experienced in the cinema.
If you’ve managed to see the film already let me know your thoughts!
salmonconnery 