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In its first three days on Netflix, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man movie racked up more than 25m views – miles ahead of the competition that week. No matter that it had also had a cinema run in the UK, after a grand red carpet premiere at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on 2 March.
Banijay Entertainment, one of the production companies behind the film, has also launched the official Peaky Blinders shop, an online store selling branded merchandise. Such hoopla highlights how streaming platforms, led by Netflix, are increasingly reversing the traditional content pipeline from the cinema to streaming.
Instead of films migrating from cinemas to streaming, moviegoers are finding they’re going the other way too as their favourite streaming shows and films are turning up on the big screen.
Beyond marketing or awards qualification, these forays into the movie theatres are becoming a more meaningful avenue for building franchises and boosting revenue. But in expanding beyond the TV screen, streaming platforms also risk alienating core fans.
Catering to the avid fans of hit shows such as Peaky Blinders, Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and The Mandalorian is streamers’ attempt to push beyond everyday home viewing. Adding a touch of Hollywood glitz can help.
“Cinema still has this ability to drive anticipation, hype, excitement, and scarcity around entertainment, and it does so in a way that [streaming] platforms just can’t do,” says Ben Woods, an analyst at MIDiA Research.
For years, Netflix has pursued limited theatrical runs to debut original films such as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, mainly so they could qualify for major industry awards. What’s different now is the effort to capitalise on proven intellectual property by extending it to the new “old” market of movie theatres.
A hugely popular series such as Peaky Blinders assures a built-in audience as a base for expanding to new formats. In The Immortal Man, Netflix delivered a big-screen send-off for Birmingham gang leader Tommy Shelby and the star who had portrayed him over six seasons, Cillian Murphy.
“This is one for the fans,” said the actor, who also served as a producer on The Immortal Man, underscoring the intended audience.
For Netflix, the potential of the stream-to-screen leap became clear last year when it brought its most popular movie, KPop Demon Hunters, to cinemas. After premiering on the service last June, special singalong versions of the animated musical adventure had limited theatrical releases on two weekends, in August and over Halloween.
Besides providing a boost in streaming views, the theatrical showings earned over $24m (£18m) at the box office and helped the film win two Academy Awards, for best animated feature and best original song.
Discussing the film’s breakout success during a Netflix event last autumn, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos backed the company’s streaming-first strategy. “We believe that this film, KPop Demon Hunters, actually worked because it was released on Netflix first,” he said, citing the platform’s recommendation engine.
That suggests that the planned Demon Hunters sequel, which Netflix confirmed this month, will also debut on the service before any theatrical launch. Still, the fact that Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man opened in cinemas first indicates there’s no rigid rule.
“I think Netflix is still trying to figure out what its theatrical release strategy is,” says Daniel Loria, SVP content strategy and editorial director at The Boxoffice Company. He adds that gaps in the release calendar offer opportunities for the company to fill with its own content.
“There are so many weekends where there’s really nothing going on,” he says, despite a rising number of film releases since the pandemic low point.
For the major studios, too, the lines between streaming and the box office are beginning to blur. In ramping up their streaming operations in recent years, they’ve grown their own hit s films for broader exploitation. A case in point is The Mandalorian and Grogu, the movie based on the Disney+ series The Mandalorian that ran for three seasons and made Grogu (better known as Baby Yoda) a pop culture icon.
Last year, Series creator Jon Favreau told Empire that while he had already scripted a fourth season for the show, he pivoted to a new script for the film. That move reflects Disney’s overall aim to return Star Wars stories to cinemas.
Favreau’s situation highlights a challenge series creators face when turning episodic material into a feature film. “Do you lean heavily with the theatrical releases into serving dedicated fans who understand all of the story and the background,” Woods asks. “Or do you try to make a stand-alone movie that can attract a general viewer as well as a fan?”
The difficulty of achieving that balance is seen in the mixed reaction to The Immortal Man on the Peaky Blinders subreddit, which has nearly 250,000 members. While many commenters appreciated the film’s production and performances, others took issue with the film’s ending, narrative choices, and whether it was even suited to a feature format.
“If they were going to invest the time and money anyway, why not just make another season and actually give the story room to breathe?” wrote one poster. That view contrasts with a generally favourable reception elsewhere, including a roughly 90% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and moviegoers.
Still, the fluid boundary between TV and movies means diehard fans shouldn’t fret too much. Netflix announced on 20 March that two new seasons of Peaky Blinders are coming, set in the postwar era and featuring a new generation of Shelbys. How long before that show gets a movie spin-off?
