During a recent preview event, Netflix’s choice to cancel a movie featuring Halle Berry that was almost finished has been referred to as an unusual occurrence.
The post-production process for The Mothership, a science fiction thriller that completed filming in 2021, was cancelled last week due to reports of high costs for “significant reshoots” and complications with aging child actors.
During the event on Wednesday, Bela Bajaria, who is the chief content officer and interim head of the film division, stated: “It’s rare to think about how many things we produce.”
The movie featured an Academy Award recipient playing the role of a mother who discovers an alien object on her farm. The screenplay was written by British writer-director Matthew Charman, who was also nominated for an Oscar for his work on Bridge of Spies.
“It’s difficult to ask, ‘What can we learn from this?’ It doesn’t happen often,” Bajaria stated. “And we must keep in mind that it takes the collaboration of 100 to 150 people and a certain magic and chemistry to create something, and not everything turns out the way we hope. In the case of this project, there were numerous creative challenges during production, so the decision was made by everyone involved to move on and work on something else together in the future.”
Berry is collaborating with Netflix on The Union, an upcoming thriller starring Mark Wahlberg.
Charman, Berry, and the producers of the film have not yet released a statement.
Other films that have been cancelled in a similar fashion include Batgirl, a $90 million DC adventure that was stopped during post-production, and Coyote vs Acme, which was completed but will not be released due to the Warners studio claiming a tax write-down. The movie, which features a mix of live-action and animation with John Cena as the star, has been offered to other studios. Netflix also chose not to release two finished films, The Inheritance and House/Wife, last year, but gave the filmmakers the opportunity to find another distributor.
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In 2022, the production for the animated movie Cattywampus, directed by Gore Verbinski who also directed The Ring and Rango, was halted by Netflix.
Source: theguardian.com
