‘Spiderhead’ and the Five Netflix Movies That Matter

Eternals 2021

$150 — possibly the worst MCU movie.

Spiderhead 2022

Bought sight-unseen for $80 as 'Escape From Spider-Head' — the reason for this episode.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage 2021

$50, and Sean is fairly sure Chris still hasn't seen it.

Spider-Man: No Way Home 2021

$230 — called it a bargain, given it was the movie sensation of late 2021.

Red, White and Water

Roughly $490 — and it still doesn't have a release date, so the auction remains technically unresolved.

Spiderhead 2022

Joseph Kosinski directs Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as convicts volunteering for emotion-altering drug trials run by Chris Hemsworth's prison overseer. Both call it a solid, well-crafted 'B-plus movie' — Sean compares its themes of soft workplace control to Severance, Chris flags a soft-rock-over-harrowing-imagery trick that goes back to Reservoir Dogs, and both think Hemsworth, playing a motor-mouthed tech villain, is doing the real heavy lifting.

Bright 2017

The moment things really soured, per Chris — 'everything about this is off.'

The Cloverfield Paradox 2018

Dropped right after the Super Bowl; the other marker of the shift into buying up studio blockbusters-in-waiting.

Bird Box 2018

Hundreds of millions watched it and it became a meme, but neither host thinks anyone would call it good.

Red Notice 2021

Sean's guess: of the 350 million who watched it, fewer than 50 million actually thought it was good.

The Adam Project 2022

Army of the Dead 2021

6 Underground 2019

Both hosts genuinely like it — critically reviled, but a self-aware Michael Bay pastiche that works for them.

The Old Guard 2020

Extraction 2020

A solid Chris Hemsworth action movie, if not exactly rewatchables material.

Triple Frontier 2019

A years-in-development-hell project they actually got made — "we love Triple Frontier here."

The Lost Daughter 2021

A literary adaptation from a first-time filmmaker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that Chris calls terrific.

Okja 2017

Netflix was early on Bong Joon Ho — bittersweet in hindsight once he won the Oscar for Parasite instead.

The Irishman 2019

Roma 2018

Marriage Story 2019

White Noise 2022

Noah Baumbach's $140 million adaptation — flagged as possibly the last of these giant vanity-project checks Netflix writes.

The Two Popes 2019

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 2020

Don't Look Up 2021

Mudbound 2017

Da 5 Bloods 2020

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore 2017

Part of the 2017 stretch: two Macon Blair movies, a Charlie McDowell film, and Win It All inside three months.

Small Crimes 2017

Macon Blair wrote it.

The Discovery 2017

Charlie McDowell's vaguely sci-fi entry from that same 2017 run.

Win It All 2017

A movie both hosts love.

War Machine 2017

The Gentlemen 2020

Still floating in and out of Netflix's top 10 years later — Chris thinks people mistake it for a new Guy Ritchie movie made for the service.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie 2019

Cited as a model for reviving old IP as a single movie instead of a new season.

Blonde 2022

Andrew Dominik's next, due out in a few months — both hosts are genuinely excited.

Spiderhead 2022

Optioned from Condé Nast in June 2012; the pair originally wrote it on spec intending to direct it themselves before Deadpool took over their lives. Kosinski eventually came aboard and sold it to Netflix.

Deadpool 2016

Took six years to get made; they cite the freeway ambush scene as an example of how precisely they script action, down to each bullet.

Deadpool 2 2018

Home of the Davis Love III joke Reese kept fighting to keep in the script.

Zombieland 2009

Their first collaboration; led to being pitched every zombie/vampire/werewolf script in town afterward.

Zombieland: Double Tap 2019

Took ten years to get made.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation 2013

The Himalayas rope sequence, written with zero dialogue, was their most fun action sequence to write.