Netflix Wants To Make "Broad-Audience" Movies Like Star Wars And Harry Potter

Netflix's VP of original films, Tendo Nagenda, has shared some new insight on the types of projects that Netflix wants to make going forward and which directors he'd like to work with.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Nagenda said some of his "dream projects" are tentpole "adventure films" similar to Star Wars and Harry Potter.

"We're looking at big, broad-audience, PG-level adventure films as something that we want to get into. Something along the lines of the first Star Wars, or Harry Potter 1 and 2," Nagenda said. "A lot of family live action, fantasy, spectacle movies that we think are big and can play great. A Jumanji-type of story. That is the next frontier."

Nagenda said Netflix's overall mission with its original movies is to pursue "new ideas" and projects that traditional studios might pass on. "George Lucas created Star Wars--it wasn't based on a book," he said. "If you have that kind of imagination--like the Wachowskis with The Matrix--we feel like we're the place to take the chance on those types of innovative ideas and filmmakers."

And regarding which directors Netflix wants to work with, Nagenda called out people like the Oscar-winning Get Out director Jordan Peele and Inception helmer Christopher Nolan. Nagenda also said Netflix is a big fan of Inglourious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino.

"We have to concentrate our efforts on finding people of that talent level that we can work with as early as possible and then get them to make movies only for Netflix," he said.

In 2017, Nolan told IndieWire that he would never work with Netflix due to what he described as the company's anti-movie theatre stance.

Netflix has already been successful in luring a huge name to make a movie for the streaming network. The company financed Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, and it proved to be one of the platform's most popular movies ever, even if it didn't win any of the Oscars it was nominated for.