This decade, we’ve seen budgets balloon to the point where it’s nearly impossible for a film, no matter how much it makes, to recoup its entire budget.
Fresh off their recent Marvel hire to helm the next two ‘Avengers’ movies, Joe and Anthony Russo’s latest Netflix extravaganza, titled “Electric State,” reportedly cost $320 million to produce. At least this one won’t necessarily need to recoup any of its money back since it’s set to hit Netflix on March 2025.
Now, there’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes drama with this one, and I’ll try to briefly recap why the budget might have been this high.
Principal photography on the film began back in October 2022. A month later, production had to be temporarily paused after a crew member working on the set died in an off-set car crash. Filming “officially” wrapped in February 2023. However, reshoots did occur in March and April of this year.
The cast for “The Electric State” includes Millie Bobbie Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Giancarlo Espostito, Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox, and Jenny Slate. It’s a sci-fi story, based on Simon Stålenhag‘s 2018 illustrated novel of the same name. Here’s the synopsis:
“The Electric State” is a coming-of-age tale that mixes sci-fi and western genres in a retro-futuristic past. Brown plays an orphaned teenager who traverses the American West with her robot friend and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother.
Netflix outbid vying studios to snatch up “The Electric State” when it went on the market in early 2022. Will their investment pay off with high viewership numbers?
What I do know is that you’ll be hearing a lot more about why exactly the budget ballooned past the $300M mark. However, earlier in the year, I was told that ‘Electric State’ was one of the reasons why Netflix recently conducted a reassessment of its film division, which, among other changes, had Dan Lin replacing Scott Stuber as head of film.
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