Kathryn Bigelow & Noah Baumbach Films Confirmed by Netflix for 2025

In terms of Oscar contenders, 2024 was a weak year for Netflix. They bought “Emilia Perez” at Cannes, and that film will probably contend in plenty of above the line categories, otherwise the streamer’s other baity titles failed to hit the Oscar sweet spot— “The Piano Lesson,” “Maria,” “His Three Daughters.”

Part of the reason for this failure had to do with the strikes delaying numerous, or even shelving, numerous productions. However, the prime catalyst might have had to do with the streaming service’s new chief of content, Dan Lin, stating that the focus at the streamer was to greenlight films that were “more about audience, and less about auteurs.”

So, after years of funding passion projects from the likes of Scorsese, Coen, Lee, Cuaron, Inarritu, Campion, Cooper, Soderbergh, and Bong, among many others, the streaming giant has finally decided that it should stick to producing the kind of brainless crap that tends to invade its weekly top 10 films (Here’s looking at you “Back in Action”).

With that said, 2025 is looking a tad brighter. A shareholders letter has Netflix confirming Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” and Kathryn Bigelow’s untitled White House thriller for 2025 release. This means we might see these two films premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September.

I decided to compile a quick list of the most interesting Netflix films set for 2025 release. As you can see, it’s still not that impressive, but new projects from Baumbach, Bigelow, Del Toro, and Berger will no doubt be campaigned for awards.

“Jay Kelly” (Noah Baumbach)
“Frankenstein” (Guillermo del Toro)
“The Ballad of a Small Player” (Edward Berger)
“Untitled” (Kahtryn Bigelow)
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story” (Rian Johnson)
“Havoc” (Gareth Evans)
“RIP” (Joe Carnahan)
“Peaky Blinders/Immortal Man” (Steven Knight)
“The Thursday Murder Club” (Chris Columbus)

Of course, I’m not counting “The Electric State,” “Happy Gilmore 2,” “Fear Street: Prom Queen,” “Leo 2,” “Enola Holmes 3,” and all of the other “big” titles that were created for the sole consumption of clicks, or views, or whatever the hell Netflix likes to call its “numbers” these days.