At least Netflix is giving us new movies every week in 2021

Netflix Film Club on YouTube
Culture
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The pandemic may have seismically disrupted moviegoing, but business is booming for the world’s largest streaming service. Netflix’s ability to keep releasing buzzy films and franchises has been mostly unhampered by the ongoing health crisis. Case in point: the platform is making good on its promise to release new movies every week in 2021, and its slate is impressive.

Netflix began teasing its game plan for weekly new films back in October, with national commercial spots. This week, the streamer released a celebrity-laden sizzle reel showcasing the likes of Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Adams, and Chris Hemsworth — all plugging their respective projects.

“What I love about movies is they can make you feel every emotion,” Regina King said, teasing her Western The Harder They Fall, which also stars Idris Elba and Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors.

“I love showing people what a superhero can look like,” quipped Octavia Spencer, of her new film Thunder Force. “I like making any movie where I get to throw stuff,” added McCarthy, her co-star.

Halle Berry and Lin-Manuel Miranda are each making their directorial debuts for Netflix. She helmed an MMA drama titled Bruised, which screened as a work-in-progress at the Toronto Film Festival and landed a multi-million dollar distribution deal with the streamer. He adapted Jonathan Larson’s musical Tick, Tick… Boom! into a feature film starring Andrew Garfield.

The list of buzzy projects goes on: Amy Adams stars in a thriller called The Woman in the Window. Gadot, Reynolds, and Johnson teamed up for a big-budget heist film titled Red Notice. Hemsworth is in a slick-looking flick called Escape from Spiderhead, based on a George Saunders short story, in which the actor drives a speedboat.

Jennifer Garner made a kids’ movie called Yes Day, which includes a scene where a family drives through a carwash with the windows down. Zany! Netflix’s slate also includes the culmination of a couple of homegrown, super-popular franchises: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kissing Booth.

Netflix’s massive movie push — there are 71 titles across all genres programmed for 2021 — comes at a moment when competitors in the streaming space are battling for eyeballs (and thus subscription dollars). Famously, Warner Bros. announced that its entire 2021 movie slate would debut on HBO Max and in cinemas simultaneously. Notably, that decision has spurred all sorts of backlash and hand-wringing about the death of movie theaters. But as Netflix’s film announcement today makes clear, the services positioned to nimbly navigate this unprecedented moment in history are the ones most likely to reign in the future.

The full slate is below:

8 Rue de l’Humanité*

A Boy Called Christmas

A Castle for Christmas

Afterlife of the Party

Army of the Dead

Awake

A Week Away

A Winter’s Tale from Shaun the Sheep**

Back to the Outback

Bad Trip

Beauty

Blonde

Blood Red Sky*

Bombay Rose

Beckett

Bruised

Concrete Cowboy

Don’t Look Up

Double Dad*

Amy Adams in 'The Woman in the Window'/Netflix

Escape from Spiderhead

Fear Street Trilogy

Fever Dream*

Finding ‘Ohana (January 29)

Fuimos Canciones*

I Care A Lot (February 19)**

Intrusion

Kate

Love Hard

Malcolm & Marie (February 5)

Monster

Moxie (March 3)

Munich*

John David Washington and Zendaya in 'Malcolm & Marie'/Netflix

Nightbooks

Night Teeth

No One Gets Out Alive

O2*

Outside the Wire (January 15)

Penguin Bloom (January 27)**

Pieces of Woman (January 7)

Red Notice

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Robin Robin

Skater Girl

Stowaway**

Sweet Girl

The Dig (January 29)

The Guilty

The Hand of God*

The Harder They Fall

The Kissing Booth 3

The Last Letter from Your Lover**

The Last Mercenary*

The Loud House Movie

The Power of the Dog

The Princess Switch 3

Jennifer Garner in 'Yes Day'/Netflix

There’s Someone Inside Your House

The Starling

The Swarm*

The White Tiger (January 22)

The Woman in the Window

Things Heard and Seen

Thunder Force

tick, tick...BOOM!

To All The Boys: Always and Forever

Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans

Untitled Alexandre Moratto*

Untitled Graham King

Untitled Alicia Keys Rom-Com

Wish Dragon

YES DAY

*non-English language

**not available globally