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“La Bola Negra” has mucho heat. The generational queer drama swept the Cannes Film Festival off its feet in May, nabbing a $5 million sale to Netflix and earning helmers Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo the jury prize
for best director. After lighting up last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival, the Penélope Cruz-starrer is on its way to Toronto for yet another grand premiere. That’s plenty of bragging rights for an Oscar hopeful, but there’s one more bona fide that has raised eyebrows in the industry: “La Bola Negra” will receive the longest theatrical rollout that Netflix has given any of its films to date. The project has set a 46-day release for Oct. 16, before landing on the Netflix platform on Dec. 2.
For years, the streamer has engaged in splashy limited releases to hype awards contenders and appease filmmakers who still yearn for the magic of movie theaters. But something about the “La Bola Negra” plan is hitting differently with sources — to say nothing of Netflix’s designs for 2027. That’s when Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” will enjoy a wide release (including Imax screens) for almost 50 days, while the company’s animated “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” will play wide for 47 days at Christmas. The feeling shared by numerous power players interviewed by Variety is that Netflix — the great Hollywood disruptor — is inching closer to embracing the roughly 130-year tradition of theatrical exhibition. It will also be showing its hand for the first time by reporting box office grosses for a slew of upcoming releases, Variety has learned.
“The real question is ‘What does Netflix want to be now?’” posed one high-level executive at a legacy film studio. “Having almost bought Warner Bros. Discovery, you get the sense that they can’t put some of that toothpaste back in the tube.”
The executive is referring to Netflix’s willingness to own and operate a theatrical distribution entity — as it showed in attempting to acquire Warner Bros. and HBO, until David Ellison’s Paramount swooped in with a larger offer. In a subsequent interview with Bloomberg, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted that he could “see us doing things that we haven’t done before” with movie theaters, but insisted the company was streaming first, as always. For years, Sarandos pooh-poohed the idea of a robust theatrical window, even calling it an “outdated concept” compared with his on-demand and bingeable business model. The numbers seem to back him up. Streaming originals made up 12 of the top 20 most-watched general audience movies around the world this year, per a 2026 report from Nielsen. Thats’ up from seven last year, and includes Netflix’s Matt Damon-Ben Affleck project “The Rip” and “War Machine.”
The cinema owners, in turn, have done their share of resisting Netflix titles, namely over the company’s refusal to give them a standard period of exclusivity before moving to streaming. COVID- 19 dashed all theatrical hopes when cineplexes were shut down, and the exhibitors have been clawing their way back to normalcy (playing films for 45 days on the big screen before moving them to other windows is the current industry standard). For one of the most deep-pocketed tech monoliths in the world to reconsider, even lightly, its position on theatrical would be a boost, one veteran film distributor says.
“The exhibitors would absolutely welcome this. Imagine if Netflix of all places threw its weight behind a real theatrical marketing campaign, and not some awards play,” the source said. Though Netflix would be welcomed to the theatrical sandbox, its competitors are insistent that it play by the rules. That means reporting box office grosses, something the data-shy Netflix has never engaged in (to the chagrin of studio and indie distributors). But Netflix will report box office grosses for six upcoming films, two company insiders said: “Narnia” and “Charlie,” as well as “La Bola Negra,” David Fincher’s “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” “The Mosquito Bowl” and “Ink.”
As Netflix and fellow streamers like Apple and Prime Video rose to prominence — largely by overpaying talent with back-end buyouts based on hypothetical box office projections — the establishment fought back by saying the only way to create lasting value for a company’s film library was to eventize each release with major marketing dollars.
Netflix seemed to agree with this, to an extent. Take the eye-popping $450 million it spent in 2021 to acquire the two sequels to Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” ensemble murder mystery. Part of that deal, Variety reported at the time, entailed tens of millions of dollars in marketing spending to make the films feel as big as theatrical debuts. Netflix fulfilled its promise to spend big, but many industry observers said the company left a ton of cash on the table by skipping cinemas. The same was said in 2024 of the Jason Bateman thriller “Carry-On,” the third-most-watched film ever on the service.
Theatrical distribution at Netflix has been headed by Spencer Klein since 2019. The former 20th Century Fox steward, who booked releases for juggernauts like the “Deadpool” and “Planet of the Apes” franchises, also dates movies on the service and manages Netflix-owned theaters in New York and Los Angeles. He also guided Netflix to its first No. 1 box office weekend in August 2025, with a sing-along version of its animated Oscar winner “KPop Demon Hunters.” Klein is respected among his peers and will be watched closely as “Narnia” and “Charlie” start ramping up.
Those inside Netflix, per individuals with close knowledge of the company, are downplaying the significance of this theatrical flirtation. Extending big-screen runs, as the company line often goes, is part of a bespoke process where the film team decides “what’s right” for each movie.
