WAR MACHINE Trailer

With the Netflix logo sitting in the corner throughout the trailer for War Machine, it’s impossible not to wonder how the company landed Brad Pitt. He’s a movie star, after all, one of the few left as big-budget effects have whittled down their once pivotal role. Pitt’s face, though, is one you can still slap on a film and sell, so how in the world is this Pitt-filled trailer relegated to Netflix?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the basic answer is money. Netflix shelled out $60 million when other potential backers wanted to lower the production budget, so Pitt, writer/director David Michôd, and the rest of the team took the Netflix money and ran.

The film is a potentially unpopular war satire, taking jabs at America’s strategy in Afghanistan while troops are still fighting and dying. Modern studios getting cold feet over such material is reminiscent of an event in another Netflix project, the documentary series Five Came Back. With World War II looming overseas, George Stevens suggested to RKO Pictures an adaptation of the anti-war novel Paths of Glory. RKO shot him down with the response: “This is no time to be making an anti-war picture. War is in the offing.”

Stevens never got to make the adaptation, but now there’s companies like Netflix willing to take a chance on politically and socially critical material. Michôd, the oddball mind behind Animal Kingdom and The Rover, got to make a satire with a movie star lead, and all of us will be able to watch it in our own homes. What a wonderful world.

War Machine is directed by David Michôd and stars Brad Pitt, Anthony Michael Hall, and Topher Grace. It will be released on Netflix on May 26th, 2017.

Do you think this war satire will work? Let us know in the comments!