Batman Director Matt Reeves Sets Up Production Deal at Netflix for Future Movies

In yet another sign of the changing times, director Matt Reeves at the height of his blockbuster and franchised prowess has set-up a new deal for his production company, 6th & Idaho, with the streaming service Netflix, as per Deadline. To contextualize this for a moment, the director of the last two highly regarded Planet of the Apes films and WB’s upcoming and untitled Batman movie is setting up shop for at least the next several years with Netflix, which would allow the streaming giant to have first look at any movies Reeves produces through 6th & Idaho, which presumably would include films he would also direct.

The move follows a year in which Netflix has attracted increasingly well-known genre filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho and David Ayer in 2017, and then Duncan Jones and (remarkably) Martin Scorsese in 2018. The deal means that on either side of the undated Batman movie’s production, Reeves could conceivably helm a movie released on Netflix. This continues to feed into Netflix’s ethos to disrupt and shift the way movies are distributed with an emphasis for on-demand releases, even as Netflix still struggles to find a film that breaks out in the mainstream as well as its biggest zeitgeist-shaping series have, such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things.

Reeves is also at a point of high-demand right now. Previously known as a small genre director who helmed Cloverfield and then the very underrated Let Me In (which while a remake of Let the Right One In, had its own unique beauty to it), that has changed in recent years. Following the success and reception of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014, Reeves has been a consistently in-demand filmmaker, as seen in both last year’s well reviewed (if less spectacular at the box office) War for the Planet of the Apes and WB landing him for The Dark Knight.

Intriguingly, this also means Idaho & 6th is parting ways with 20th Century Fox, where Reeves worked on both of the last two Apes movies. In a point of entire speculation, it is curious that he would part from the major studio for Netflix just as the Disney-Fox deal looms large in the background.