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. At least this latest example won’t need to recoup its budget at the box-office since it’s going straight to Netflix.
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. The film, which is supposed to his Netflix on March 2025, now has a trailer.
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?
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. I’m sure we’ll eventually be hearing a lot more about the exact reasons why the budget ballooned past the $300M mark.
Coppola lost more than $100M on "Megalopolis," got hammered for it, and he knows the clock is running out for one more film. If "Glimpses of the Moon" is that film, someone needs to write the check soon.