After managing to establish themselves as serious awards season players with a string of critically-acclaimed movies and TV shows over the last few years, Netflix are now looking to get more into the blockbuster market. Unfortunately, however, the results have been a bit mixed.
David Ayer’s Bright was a big hit upon release, but quickly faded from memory and its sequel is now seemingly stuck in development hell, while Michael Bay’s 6 Underground brought in a ton of viewers but found itself with the same tepid reviews that most of the director’s output gets. Thankfully, though, the streamer has also had some big hits in the blockbuster genre, with Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction generating tons of buzz and Charlize Theron’s The Old Guard going down pretty well, too.
But perhaps the most exciting title when it comes to Netflix blockbusters is Red Notice. It’ll see Dwayne Johnson lead Skyscraper and Central Intelligence director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s globe-trotting heist flick, and he’ll be joined by major stars like Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. It has all the makings of a major hit for the streamer and understandably, it’s a very buzzy project.
Things were moving along quite smoothly for it, too, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. That, of course, led to a halt in production and while shooting has been stalled for some time now, Johnson recently took to Instagram to announce that filming will finally resume next month.
I’m happy to announce our RED NOTICE production will resume shooting next month in mid September. Thank you to our tremendous partners at NETFLIX who’ve joined us shoulder to shoulder to provide the safest and most aggressive “quarantined bubble” for our production crew as possible. I’m confident in our safety strategy and execution, but we’ll also be fluid and amenable to best practice changes on the fly.
So, not too long now until things are able to get back on track and with any luck, this little hiccup won’t result in any substantial delays when it comes to a release date. At the moment, if there are no further setbacks, we should see Netflix‘s Red Notice in 2021. But who knows what’ll happen with the pandemic and if there’ll be another round of lockdowns.
For now, we’ll just keep our fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly and will certainly keep you posted should Johnson, or anyone else involved in the film, share any additional updates.
