EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has stepped up to its first major animated feature film. It will finance America: The Motion Picture, an R-rated revisionist history tale about the founding of the country, with Channing Tatum voicing the lead role of George Washington. Dave Callaham wrote the script, and Matt Thompson is directing.
Callaham is producing and so is Thompson and his Floyd County partner Adam Reed, the duo behind the animated series Archer. Tatum is also producing with his Free Association partners Peter Kiernan and Reid Carolin, and The Lego Movie‘s Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Will Allegra at Lord Miller.
This is the first animated film for screenwriter Callaham, who hatched The Expendables franchise and more recently wrote Zombieland 2 and an untitled pitch New Line bought for Dwayne Johnson and Will Gluck. He’s also showrunner on Amazon’s Jean-Claude Van Johnson.
Besides Archer, Reed and Thompson’s animation credits include Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo. Tatum, Carolin and Kiernan produced Logan Lucky, the upcoming Steven Soderbergh-directed pic that Tatum stars in; he’s also co-starring in Kingsman: The Golden Circle and starts production soon on Triple Frontier. Free Association’s also prepping for the March 30 Hard Rock Hotel opening of Magic Mike Live Las Vegas. Besides the animated Lego Movie and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Lord and Miller are directing the Han Solo Star Wars spinoff and writing the Lego sequel and producing the spinoffs and exec producing the 20th Fox series The Last Man On Earth, Son Of Zorn and developing the podcast Serial for TV.
Tatum and Free Association are represented by UTA, Management 360 and Hansen, Jacobson &Teller; Lord and Miller are UTA and Ziffren Brittenham; Callaham is represented by UTA, Kaplan/Perrone Entertainement and Hansen, Jacobson; and Reed and Thompson are CAA. UTA Independent Film Group arranged the financing.
I wish they keep the grimm love that show it thttttfest please keep i
who is making decision at NETFLIX…they got money to burn
They keep making money so they keep making crazy decisions because the craziness is what makes them money.
The thing is, they’re all about niche markets, which they can afford to serve because (and this doesn’t get discussed nearly enough, but it’s their secret sauce) they have radically pared down their costs compared with their competitors in entertainment distribution: broadcast, cable and theaters.
No brick & mortar sites to maintain, not even many offices. No infrastructure or installers with their vehicles to maintain like cable. Maybe a couple thousand employees for a multibillion dollar corporation. No distribution partners. Tight-fisted with its content partners. Very tight-fisted about sharing data that might give content producers an edge in negotiations.
It all adds up to a unique ability to reach a global audience that could be as much as a billion people for the lowest possible cost, to hold down subscription prices and undercut competitors. They funnel that firehose of money back into making content that is not for everyone but is catnip for someone, and hangs onto them as subscribers.
The Crown. Sense8. The OA. Adam Sandler crap movies. Lemony Snicket. MST3K revival. That seems like a random list that has nothing in common but here’s what they have in common. The people who like them don’t just like them, they LOVE them. And then there are shows like Orange is the New Black and Stranger Things, that everybody loves. Well that’s nice but everyone is trying to do that. Not everyone can make a buck with crazy niche programming.