On October 1, 2014, Netflix had announced that they signed an exclusive four-movie deal with Adam Sandler. According to Variety, Sandler’s films have grossed about $3.9 billion worldwide but his recent movies have not done well in movie theatres. Adam Sandler’s films fare better through Video on Demand, DVD sales and streaming. He will be starring in and producing these films exclusively to Netflix worldwide. This deal is assumed to be starting in 2015 when the first film is projected to be released and the genre is assumed to be a comedy.
The Netflix deal unfortunately does not cover Adam’s current Sony deal. Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions under Sony has released 25 films over its 15-year partnership. The deal with Sony also dealt with television shows like “Rules of Engagement” and “The Goldbergs”. The deal with Sony Pictures Television expired but is in the course of being renewed. Even though Adam still has the exclusivity deal with Netflix, Sony still has the first looks on all projects by Happy Madison. So if Sony does not want to distribute a film, it can be shopped somewhere else.
The importance of the Sandler-Netflix deal comes at a great time because Netflix had previously announced that they secured the sequel for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Netflix has made an impact on the television industry when they started airing original programming like “House of Cards”. Movie studios are now realizing that they don’t have to distribute movies through movie theatres, they have other avenues now. One thing that might hurt the sales of Sandler’s Netflix movies and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, is that movie theatres are threatening to boycott the showing of the movies. According to Clevver Movie's YouTube Page, in 2011, movie theatres declared that they would ban Universal’s “Tower Heist” if they aired it earlier on video on demand. Universal caved in to the theatres and that was the last discussion or thought of showing new movies through a different platform.
It is interesting to see how studios are changing into a direct deal such as this. By not only looking at the Sandler deal and the Crouching Tiger sequel, but also looking at Marvel's deal with their miniseries based on some of their comic book characters. Will this be the future of the way we all watch television and movies in the future? It is something only time will tell.
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