Netflix ends its six-year David Fincher deal amid a run of director exits

A subscriber who opened Netflix on the right day could have found Mank in the top 10 movies row, in last place. The next day it was off the list ^[6]. The deal that produced it gave Netflix exclusive streaming rights to Fincher's projects ^[3].

The pitch for a prestige director deal assumes people will press play because a famous director made the film and awards voters liked it. On Netflix's own chart, Fincher's two released films went in opposite directions ^[6][7]. At the box office both did badly. By The Verge's count, Mank took about $100,000 in a three-week theatrical run on a $25 million budget ^[5], and The Killer grossed $452,000 on a $175 million budget ^[8]. Combined, the two films sold about $552,000 in tickets against $200 million of budgets ^[2].

Ticket sales are a poor test for films that sit in cinemas for a few weeks and then stream. The chart is closer to what users did, and Netflix's recent decisions suggest the bar on it is high. The Boroughs, the Duffer brothers' next series, opened in May to what The Verge called respectable numbers and was canceled a month later ^[12].

The Verge treats the exits as Netflix moving on from long filmmaker deals ^[18], with Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery close to a megamerger ^[17]. The evidence supports fewer long deals more firmly than it supports a retreat from prestige directors. Netflix's deal with Guillermo del Toro is ongoing ^[15], and Greta Gerwig's first Narnia film will spend seven weeks in theaters ^[16]. That window is three and a half times the two weeks Fincher's The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth gets before it reaches Netflix on December 23 ^[9][3]. The Verge's account does not include what any of these deals cost.

For anyone holding a flagship partner deal, I'd use a 2x2. One axis is usage inside your own product, which for Netflix means the top 10 chart. The other is credit earned outside it, in awards or ticket sales. A partner high on both earns a long term, and Netflix is betting Gerwig's Narnia lands there. High usage with little outside credit, where The Killer sits, is worth buying one project at a time. Prestige without usage, Mank's quadrant, is defensible only if you can name what the prestige buys and budget it as marketing. A deal low on both should end.

I'd rank usage first. The tradeoff is that Mank's quadrant shrinks, and directors who want to make that kind of film take it to rival studios. The forcing function is one usage number, named at signing and checked when the term ends. Fincher's deal ran six years, two past the four-year term set when it was announced in 2020 ^[1][2][1].