When you invest $320 million into a movie, you would like it to be good, and you would like a lot of people to watch it. On both fronts, Netflix’s The Electric State appears to be failing.
The Electric State has already dropped to #3 on Netflix’s top 10 list, behind new entry Twister: Caught in the Storm, a tornado documentary, and even Kraven the Hunter, one of the biggest superhero box office disasters of all time. And this isn’t even a full week after release.
The Electric State has an utterly dismal 15% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but even with a better 73% audience score, that is not translating into great viewership so far, and the film has debuted behind a bunch of other, and cheaper, Netflix original films.
As of now, that list includes Red Notice, Extraction 2, The Gray Man, Damsel, Carry-On and Rebel Ridge in terms of its 25.2 million views over the weekend falling short of those other films. It’s not on the all-time list, which of course it’s too early for that, but to make it there, it will have to make it past most of those other films, but also others like Don’t Look Up, The Adam Project, Bird Box and Leave the World Behind.
Separately, directors the Russo Brothers do have one other movie on this list, The Gray Man, and star Millie Bobby Brown has one too with Damsel. But put them together and The Electric State is a worse feature than either.
Still, it’s hard to gauge what exactly Netflix considers a failure. If this ends up landing at what, #4, #7, #10 eventually, is that a win for that price? If it doesn’t make the list at all, is it a disaster? We can’t really get into their thought process, but you might understand how at least algorithmically, they wanted to pair this IP with these directors and those stars. But you can throw a peanut butter sandwich into a bowl of chicken noodle soup and that creates a soggy mess, even if individually, those dishes work.
The Russos have said that right now, there are no conversations about The Electric State 2, though there may be an idea for a spin-off series based in the Electric State “universe.” They also reiterated their commitment to star Millie Bobby Brown as someone they love, when asked about a potential MCU role for her, saying she’s always on their lists.
It is hard to wrap my brain around the idea that a movie could cost this much and be this bad and still somehow be considered a win for Netflix, but it’s impossible to know what they think really, as this is not a show that they’ll cancel, nor, apparently, a sequel they’ll axe. More or less if they’re proud of it, they’ll brag about the numbers, if not, we’ll probably hear very little.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
