Netflix spent over $275 million to make “The Electric State,” a sci-fi action adventure film starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt and a slew of sentient robots. Had it opened in theaters, 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 though the movie 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 “The Gray Man” (41.2 million), which was made by the same directors, the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo.
But there was little hand-wringing inside Netflix this week. No marketing chief was blamed. No production executive packed up her office.
Instead, the movie demonstrates how different Netflix is from the traditional studios — and how easily the company can spend so much for a middling result without Wall Street’s noticing. (Its stock is up slightly this week.)
Truth is, no one piece of content moves the needle at Netflix in either direction. “Squid Game 2” was the most-watched title in the company’s most recent engagement report, with 87 million views, but it accounted for only 0.7 percent of total viewing. Rather, the $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 percent of what the company will spend on content this year.
“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 Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with Lightshed Partners. He was referring to a distressing — and zeitgeisty — four-part series about a teenage boy accused of murder that has generated 24.3 million views.
“It’s all about a portfolio approach to content,” Mr. Greenfield added.
Both 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,” Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said at an event in January showcasing the company’s 2025 lineup.
And more recently, she said that she’d greenlight “The Electric State” all over again. (Among reviewers, the film has a 15 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Among the public, it has a 73 percent positive rating.)
Netflix acquired “The Electric State” in 2022 after Universal balked at the reported $200 million price tag. Those costs ballooned in part because of the amount of special effects involved and the extensive upfront 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, Dan Lin, is cutting costs where he can, though still spending lavishly on highly coveted projects. He plunked down a healthy chunk for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” and tried to land Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” by offering $150 million. (He lost out to Warner Bros., which offered to give the film, starring 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. The Russos’ production company, AGBO, is set to begin filming “The Whisper Man,” a crime thriller starring Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan, this year, and an “Extraction” television series is also in the works. (They are also responsible for Disney’s high-grossing “Avengers” films and are lined up to direct the next two.)
“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. Last week, two original stories — “Novocaine,” starring Jack Quaid, and “Black Bag,” starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender — headlined the slowest moviegoing weekend of 2025.
Even franchise fare like “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Paddington in Peru” isn’t matching the grosses of its predecessors. Hollywood was hopeful that 2025 would be the year the box office would come roaring back to its prepandemic levels, but so far it’s trailing 2024 by 5 percent and 2019 by 38 percent.
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 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,” Mr. Newman said. “Maybe they want McDonald’s instead of Peter Luger.”