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Rambling Reporter: Why Halle Berry’s Netflix Film ‘The Mothership’ Got Axed
From aging child actors to the exit of one of the streamer's high profile executives, THR investigates the reasons why the Matt Charman-directed film got pulled from the streamer, plus dish on Sydney Sweeney, Milos Bikovic and the Palladinos’ new dance project.
It didn’t set off nearly the online uproar as did Warner Bros.’ decision to dynamite its $70 million
Coyote vs. Acme action-animation hybrid, but another high-profile movie was recently, much more quietly, dumped. Netflix has grounded
The Mothership, a Halle Berry sci-fi thriller directed by Oscar-nominated
Bridge of Spies co-writer Matt Charman.
The $40 million project started filming during the pandemic in 2021 and ran into one snafu after another — scheduling conflicts, reshoots, strikes and, most recently, continuity issues brought on by growth spurts among some of the children in its cast. During a Jan. 31
news conference,
Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria cited “lots of production issues and story issues” for shelving the movie and insisted that “everybody just felt like it was the right thing to just not do it.”
A source tells THR, however, that there may have been another reason Mothership got axed: Its biggest champion, film exec Lisa Nishimura, abruptly departed last year during a C-suite reshuffling, leaving the project marooned without a benefactor. Berry, of course, will be fine; she’ll be starring in another Netflix film,
The Union, a spy caper due in August. Charman will be good, too.
THR has learned he is set as showrunner for
In the Room, a Netflix thriller series starring Suranne Jones that enters production this year. Says the insider about
The Mothership, “It’s a total bummer result — but with all this love and good feeling around it — and there’s just disappointment that audiences ultimately are not able to see the film.” —
Ryan Gajewski
www.hollywoodreporter.com
