As the only director in the history of cinema to have seen their filmography earn in excess of $10 billion at the box office, it’s completely understandable that Steven Spielberg sees a clear distinction between making movies for the big screen and streaming.
The legend has never shown much interest in helming a project that would bypass theaters entirely, but he’s clearly not above producing them, now that his Amblin Entertainment company inked a huge development deal with Netflix.
Amblin already has an agreement in place with Universal, but Spielberg will oversee a slew of new titles for both outfits, and it’s up to him which ones end up going where. The initial report offers that it could result in multiple Netflix exclusives on an annual basis, and from the three-time Academy Award winner’s perspective, it’s about to get a lot easier for him to push things through production now that he’s got two avenues with which to do it, especially as the streamer is intent to deliver as many in-house movies as possible.
Spielberg has West Side Story finally releasing in December and is gearing up to shoot semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans, but he’s remained incredibly active as either a producer or executive producer, with his recent and upcoming credits extending to notorious flops Cats and Men in Black: International, Neil Armstrong story First Man, Jurassic World: Dominion, next summer’s new Transformers and Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which has Bradley Cooper set to direct and star, and was ironically picked up by Netflix.
We shouldn’t be expecting Steven Spielberg to start directing Netflix movies, then, but his fingerprints are set to be all over the platform’s output over the coming years regardless.
