Unfortunate news, citizens of Earth: the Warner Bros. Discovery film shelving epidemic has broken containment. Please stay calm and try not to panic... but if you do, we can’t say we blame you.
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Netflix is the first non-David Zaslav-led streamer to adopt the strategy used for Batgirl, the Scoob! sequel, and most recently Coyote Vs. Acme; namely, the studio deciding not to release a mostly completed film for financial reasons. Per a report from The InSnider (confirmed by IGN), Netflix will not be releasing the Halle Berry-starring sci-fi thriller The Mothership, despite having already poured a significant amount of time and money into the production. The project was first announced back in 2021 and was even included in an upcoming film preview from 2022. You can watch that brief clip—now likely the only one that will see the light of day—between 2:10 and 2:14 below.
The reasoning behind Netflix’s decision is a little fuzzy. While films like Batgirl were ostensibly shelved so the money-bleeding studio could receive a meager tax write-off, it sounds like Netflix’s reasoning has more to do with avoiding investing even more money and time into a movie that has already claimed so much of it. The film required numerous re-shoots, faced massive delays, and simply “couldn’t be completed” in the end, according to a source close to the production. IGN did not specify whether or not this source was a representative of Netflix specifically, and the streamer did not respond to The A.V. Club’s request for comment on this story.
According to the InSneider newsletter (via The Independent), these reshoots were also challenged by the fact that the film heavily features child actors, who had grown too much in the interim. Directed by Matthew Charman, the film starred Berry as a mother dealing with her husband’s mysterious disappearance from their family farm, where she eventually discovers a “strange, extraterrestrial object underneath their home” that leads her and her kids on a “race to find their husband, father, and most importantly—the truth,” according to the film’s logline (via People).
In this particular instance, it sounds like Netflix’s decision to abandon the film might not be quite as adversarial to art and the creative process as WBD’s axings have been. If the film wasn’t going to come together, it wasn’t going to come together. But the precedent still stands; any day a project that hundreds of people poured blood, sweat, and tears into is left to gather dust is a sad day for the industry as a whole. It’s hard to ignore the fact that it feels like those days are coming more and more frequently in recent months.
Emma Keates writes for the A.V. club, which like The Root is owned by G/O media.
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