After the success of “Tyler Rake: Extraction” and “Extraction 2,” Netflix would surely have loved to snag another action thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, but Amazon Prime Video got the nod instead. What’s behind it?
Pedro Pascal (“Game Of Thrones,” “The Last Of Us”) and Chris Hemsworth (“Thor,” “Extraction”) in a new action thriller about a cop hunting a jewel thief? That’s a total package that a number of studios and streaming services in Hollywood have been licking their fingers for. Last week, Amazon and Netflix were in the finals of the bidding war for “Crime 101,” and now a winner has emerged from this duel:
Although Netflix is said to have offered as much as $100 million for the project and Amazon “only” about $90 million, Amazon has won the bid – because the film will not only be shown on the streaming service Prime Video, but will also receive a theatrical release. Netflix was apparently not willing to do so (usually the streaming service only shows the films in theaters that have a chance of Oscar nominations), but on the contrary even demanded changes to the script.
“CRIME 101” ON PRIME VIDEO – BUT WITHOUT CHRIS HEMSWORTH?
This is reported by the best connected Hollywood insider Matt Belloni in his newsletter What I’m Hearing from Puck. Netflix should be particularly annoyed by this development; after all, the “Tyler Rake” series is the first franchise to have two titles in the top 10 most-watched English-language Netflix movies (“Tyler Rake: Extraction” and “Tyler Rake: Extraction 2”). A new Hemsworth thriller could certainly have tied in well with this success.
But is Chris Hemsworth still involved in the project at all? According to a Belloni source, the Marvel and “Extraction” star could jump ship, though of course Amazon is likely to have bought the project precisely because of Hemsworth’s involvement. And this, although currently due to the ongoing strike in Hollywood no deals with actors* may be concluded at all, one the stars, who have at least expressed their interest before the strike, currently actually can not contractually bind.
As Belloni further writes, it could therefore be that the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA is taking another close look at how this deal came about. The project was sold by the talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which in turn talks about having only handed over the rights to the project to the production company Working Title. So how exactly it looks here with the participation of the stars, is still open, the last word possibly not yet spoken…
THIS IS “CRIME 101”
Either way, “Crime 101” cannot be filmed as long as the strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the scriptwriters union WGA continue. A release date on Amazon Prime Video and in theaters is therefore difficult to predict, but it is unlikely to be anything before 2025.
“Crime 101” is about a series of jewel thefts on the American West Coast. While the police assume that a Colombian cartel is behind it, Detective Lou Lubesnick assumes that it’s a lone perpetrator…
