The Russo Bros.’ latest Netflix spectacle, The Electric State, came with an eye-watering $320 million price tag. That’s more than the combined budgets of the last 10 Best Picture Oscar winners. And yet, despite the massive investment, the film landed with a dismal 14% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The biggest question isn’t whether The Electric State was worth the money, even though it wasn’t, it’s whether Netflix and other streamers can keep shelling out blockbuster budgets for films that don’t have a theatrical box office to justify the cost.
Joe and Anthony Russo, who previously directed Avengers: Endgame, one of the highest-grossing movie of all time, have been at the forefront of big-budget filmmaking. But even they aren’t sure this kind of spending is sustainable for streamers.
When talking to THR, Joe talked about how streaming services promote content, regardless of budget, saying:
“They ascribe the same algorithmic attention to something they spend a lot of money on as something they spend very little money on. By that model, you should probably just make everything for a medium number, right?”
He added, “Logically, it probably doesn’t make a ton of sense to continue to spend that way, but I think they might—because people still believe in ambition. Executives still believe in ambition. People still want the branding that comes with ambition.
“They still want that sex appeal that comes with ambition. So I still think you’ll see some of those pop through, but I don’t think it’s going to be a healthy part of the business model.”
You can still tell ambitious stories without spending over $300 million! That’s just stupid, especially for a film that has a bad story and script.
Anthony Russo went on to say thatThe Electric State was a “big test case” for how streaming platforms handle event-level filmmaking.
“The struggle is, can you eventize a streaming [film] when they don’t create any sense of special place in terms of how they’re presenting to the audience for a movie to say it is an event – and they don’t go out into the wider marketplace to declare that an event.
“But they have tried using the tools they have available to them to eventize this film, and we’ve tried. So we’ll see how this plays, we’ll see what this does for Netflix, and we’ll see where it all goes.”
Well, we all know that it’s not going well for The Electric State.
Netflix’s approach to big-budget movies has been hit-or-miss. Films like Red Notice and The Gray Man (also directed by the Russos) have boasted star-studded casts and massive production values, but their long-term impact on the platform remains questionable.
Without box office revenue, Netflix measures success through subscriber engagement, but even that metric remains a murky, ever-shifting target.
In the case of The Electric State, the gamble isn’t just on whether the film succeed, it’s on whether audiences still care about event movies when they go straight to streaming.
With no theatrical exclusivity, no real marketing push outside the Netflix bubble, and a largely negative critical reception, it’s fair to wonder if this massive investment will be seen as a win or just another empty expensive experiment.
