If the movie Rim of the World, which premiered on Netflix this week, looks a little familiar to you, that’s on purpose. It’s the story of four kids, thrown together at summer camp in the middle of an alien invasion, faced with the task of carrying the one object that can defeat the aliens across war-torn Los Angeles. It’s a fun ride through childhood friendship forged amid killer aliens and saving the world. Sound like a 1980s-style adventure, like what Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment used to make? Well, good.
The basic thesis is this: the big studios need to make one particular kind of movie to stay afloat, but audiences still want to watch other stuff. Since Netflix has the money to make that other stuff, and it’s typically not going to be CGI-bloated stuff (Rim of the World apparently had a $15 million production budget), they can just ahead and greenlit those projects. Then people go to Netflix and watch the stuff, and the cycle of life is completed.
I don’t know whether or not this is a correct thesis. Or a particularly sustainable one. But as strategies go it’s fairly coherent. Also, I did mean to watch Rim of the World.