Adam Sandler has become one of the best paid movie stars of all time thanks to Netflix. Could his films be getting more interesting too?
History could have been very different. Sony Pictures was pouring nine figures of investment into a film by the name of Pixels as it headed into the mid-2010s. Just the kind of family picture to spin out a franchise, and an assortment of merchandise that parents didn’t want their kids to have. Adam Sandler was the star of the film, the latest in a huge line of productions he’d shot for Sony. But little did either party know it’d be the last live action film – at least to date – that the pair made together.
By this stage Sony had been the primary home of Sandler’s movies for over a decade, with a steady stream of hits (everything from I Know Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and You Don’t Mess With The Zohan to Big Daddy and Click). Pixels was all set to be the next: a big family adventure that blended video games, Sandler’s mates and Sandler himself. Yet when it was eventually released in the summer of 2015, the reaction to it was, well, not good.
By then, Sony and Sandler were done and dusted anyway (at least in live action) after a few years of drifting apart. He’d been toying with a western spoof that he’d wanted to set up at the studio called The Ridiculous 6, but Sony wasn’t keen on it. The studio had also passed on another potential collaboration, a $200m blockbuster Sandler wanted to make based on the board game Candy Land (nope, me neither). Relations were straining, not helped when 2011’s Jack & Jill and 2012’s That’s My Boy fell short of expected box office takings, in the case of the former getting some of the most toxic reviews of Sandler’s career.
Stream on
Jack & Jill was one of the worst received films of Sandler’s career
Separately, Netflix had lobbed a metaphorical grenade into the world of television shows when it outbid traditional American TV networks for the rights to remake the British book and show House Of Cards. It raised significant eyebrows not just for snapping the show up, but for getting into business with acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher in doing so. Don’t let passage of time blind us to just what a big deal that was. Netflix wasn’t done ripping up the rulebook either: it ordered two seasons up front, and then it introduced launching all episodes of a season in one go. Now, of course, this is more rule than exception.
But what could Netflix do to have a similar seismic impact in the film world? Well, back in the early 2010s, it needed a movie star, and with Sandler looking to take his output – and that of his Happy Madison production company – elsewhere, he seemed an ideal fit. The bevy of options, in spite of the size of Netflix’s chequebook, wasn’t vast for performers on his level of fame. It was barely even a conversation as to whether streaming was the future of cinema at that stage.
As for Sandler himself? Never mind the fact that critics regularly scorched his films, they were just the kind of Friday night with a curry and beer easy watches that Netflix was looking for. And it had the funds – extraordinary, making a statement levels of funds – to lure him.
Still, when the announcement came in October 2012 that Sander was taking his next four movies exclusively to Netflix and bypassing cinemas, the initial response was guffaws. Like the long passed their best footballer announcing they’re retiring from playing for the national team, a good year or two after they’d been last picked. It didn’t help that Sandler’s statement confirming the deal read “when these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only. Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks”. A gag that was pretty much where his films were at the time.
Backlash
The Ridiculous 6 starring Sandler, Taylor Lautner, and Luke Wilson
The feeling was that Netflix had overpaid for a movie star that audiences had had enough of. The growing criticism of Sandler’s comedies by that stage was that they were a long way from his peak, and many felt – even if it wasn’t the case – that the first draft of most of his scripts had been filmed. With Sandler’s mates rounding out the casts, they were firmly being described as more fun to make than to watch.
This notwithstanding, Sandler got to work with no intention of ripping up his modus operandi. The first three films he produced for the streaming giant certainly did little to change the narrative: 2015’s The Ridiculous 6 was criticised for being a pretty offensive, unfunny comedy; 2016’s The Do-Over was a mild improvement, whilst 2017’s Sandy Wexler went on and on, but at least got slightly better reviews. But that’s a bit like saying there’s a little bit of the rotten apple that’s safe to eat.
Yet whilst critics were scorning, audiences were watching, just as Netflix had calculated. Never forget the bedrock of user data Netflix has at its fingertips: it knew what its subscribers were watching, and knew that Sandler was a safer bet on the inside than he may have looked from further afield.
As such, in spite of the not-unreasonable protests, The Ridiculous 6 gave Netflix just what it wanted: a huge hit. Appreciating the streaming giant only releases information of viewing figures very much on its own terms, its then chief content officer nonetheless declared that in its first 30 days after debuting, the piss-poor western had more viewers than any other film on its platform.
Netflix, it seemed, had got itself something of a bargain.
Friends with benefits
Punch-Drunk Love, starring Emily Watson, one of Sandler’s finest pictures
Furthermore, in the midst of all of this, Sandler found space to explore the kind of work that had surprised people in the past. His small collection of more ‘serious’ films made pre-Netflix times include the excellent Punch-Drunk Love, the underrated Spanglish and the surprising Funny Guys. But under the cover of Netflix, he took on a role in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories. It proved to be a minor triumph.
Even by then, though, Netflix had signed up for more. Just two films into the original four film deal, it extended the agreement in the spring of 2017. By this stage, other high profile film figures were coming around to the idea of making movies for Netflix. Yet by the time they’d worked out that Sandler was actually the unlikely groundbreaking one, he’d pocketed a reported nine figures for his troubles.
The conveyor belt of familiar films kept coming. 2018’s The Week Of felt tired and overlong, and the thinking was we were just going to get a lot more of the same. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, 2019 gave Sandler the movie star pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: a critical hit, and a commercial hit.
The commercial one was arguably his best Netflix comedy to date, Murder Mystery. Reuniting him with Jennifer Aniston, the film benefitted from having a plot worth chatting about (even though the subsequent Knives Out would do it all a lot better – unsurprisingly, Netflix has snapped up the sequels to that one), and again smashed Netflix records. It was the most watched film on Netflix in the entirety of 2019. Talk continues of Murder Mystery 2.
Then, at the end of the same year, he’d headline the astonishing Uncut Gems from the Safdie brothers (Benny and Joel, who’d just directed Robert Pattinson in the excellent Good Times), fuelling chat of an Oscar nomination for him. The nomination never came, but the acclaim certainly did.
A-dam good deal?
Critically-acclaimed Uncut Gems hailed Sandler’s return to form
It’s worth noting that while all this was going on, Sandler kept a tiny toe in the world of theatrical films with the animated Hotel Transylvania franchise for Sony, the fourth chapter of which arrives in cinemas this summer. Netflix also opted to release Uncut Gems on the big screen briefly, as part of its awards push.
Other than those though, Pixels was the last huge studio-backed live action movie Sandler starred in, and it’s hard to see him fronting one up again. Now in his 50s, he has a Netflix cashpoint installed in his home, and a slate of movies he has say-so over coming our way.
Now? The next 12 months sees everyone from Dwayne Johnson to Aardman’s chickens appear in new films for streaming services, and the novelty seems as much about which movie stars are sticking with cinema releases. Against this backdrop, Netflix looked after the one who started it all for it, and signed Sandler up to a further contract extension for another four films. The bill for that? A cool $250m heading in his direction.
And a lot more Sandler movies for us, too. 2020’s Hubie Halloween was a bit more on brand, and sporting comedy Hustle is already filmed and coming our way later this year. He’s also thrown an intriguing project into the mix by the name of Spaceman. This one’s a drama about Czech boy who dreamed of being an astronaut, and Sandler co-stars with Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano. Perhaps the reception to Uncut Gems has opened his eyes again to a broader range of material.
Still, the cornerstone of the deal as far as Netflix is concerned is those Friday night movies, and Sandler – and his bank manager – very much knows it. He’s just though managed to build himself space where he doesn’t have to worry where his next meal is coming from, and instead sees – perhaps for the first time – the rest of the film industry scurrying up a path he helped carved out.
