Netflix Offloads Two Finished Films as It Refines 2023 Slate

The streaming giant has cut loose a pair of horror features — The Inheritance and House/Wife — but will allow the filmmakers to shop the projects elsewhere

In what’s beginning to be a trend for a belt-tightening era in Hollywood, studios and streamers — from AMC+ to Paramount+ and Disney to HBO Max — have been unloading or writing off completed TV projects rather than releasing them. Now THR has learned of two completed Netflix feature films, The Inheritance and House/Wife, that no longer will be distributed by the streamer, with filmmakers shopping them elsewhere for distribution. The Inheritance, directed by Alejandro Brugués and produced by Paul Schiff, and House/Wife, from director Danis Goulet and producers Tripp Vinson and Daniel Bekerman, are both horror films that were set to be released by Netflix, which will not be moving forward with the movies.

In the summer, HBO Max disclosed that the DC feature film Batgirl and the animated movie Scoob!: Holiday Haunt would be shelved after both had completed production. At the time, both were casualties of the new corporate strategy from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, which would be taking a tax write-down on the films’ budgets. It is unclear exactly why Netflix decided to unload the two features, but a notable difference from the HBO Max titles is that The Inheritance and House/Wife are being shopped elsewhere. More recently, a feature film based on the Comedy Central series Workaholics was scrapped by Paramount+ five weeks before filming was slated to begin. Like the Netflix features, this project is now being shopped.

On the TV front, multiple shows have been canceled while in various stages of production, or shows’ renewals are being rescinded before the new season gets underway. AMC Networks, which has been on unsure financial ground, has been seeking up to $400 million in write-downs, rescinding orders for such series as Demascus, 61st Street and Invitation to a Bonfire, all of which had either completed or were partially through production.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — when production halted and there were widespread theater closures — studios like Paramount and Sony offloaded completed films to recoup or minimize financial losses, and the features landed at streamers Netflix, Amazon and Apple TV+. But Netflix’s decision to offload the two titles arrives as the streamer is trying to maintain about the same level of content spend — $17 billion — of years past while focusing on profits from its 230 million-plus global subscribers. It also has pared back on the number of its film bets, but has a splashy slate of titles for the next few months that includes Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s Murder Mystery 2 (March 31), Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother (May 12)

and Chris Hemsworth’s

Extraction 2 (June 16).