“It was better not to watch it”: you will never see this science fiction film with Halle Berry announced 3 years ago!

In 2022, an unprecedented event occurred in Hollywood. Suddenly, almost finished films have been entirely abandoned by their studios, Warner Bros being the main responsible for a practice that has upset talents and moviegoers.

No one really understood why a studio had chosen to never get out of potentially profitable films like Batgirl, Coyote vs. ACME or SCOOB: Holiday Haunt, especially since they were based on recognized intellectual property. In the end, the rumor said that this decision had been motivated only by the lure of gain, Warner, in financial difficulty, having allegedly used these films as tax deductions, thus recovering a large part of his investments without risking releases a potential at the box office.

After a first negative reaction to this new, unreachable tactic from Hollywood, the situation seemed to calm down for a while. But in January 2024, Netflix announced the cancellation of the release of The Mothership, a science fiction film with Halle Berry, in development on the platform since 2021. Was this another case where a studio eager for profits protected its losses to the detriment of human creativity, or was the truth more nuanced?

A painful production?

A month later, Bela Bajaria, director of Netflix content, explained why the company had chosen to delete The Mothership of history. “” “It does not happen very often”, She conceded during a press conference (via Far Out Magazine).“If we think of everything we produce, it’s rare.»

Bela Bajaria has put her finger here on a point that sowed confusion in observers: the idea that one film can be much worse than most films – of variable quality – that Netflix diffuses. Consequently, the public assumed that the cancellation of The Mothershiptwo and a half years after the end of the shooting, was due to a matter of money. This was not the case, said Bajaria.

“” “There were a lot of production and creation problems and everyone, on both sides, the actors and us, agreed to say that it was better not to look at it. Everyone thought it was the right thing to do, and that we would do something else later.»

So, to believe Bela Bajaria, Netflix, Halle Berry and probably the director Matthew Charman have all concluded that the production of The Mothership was so painful that it was better to make sure that no one will see the film. It seemed strange and extremely discouraging for Charman, who was supposed to make his director’s debut with this project.

Jeff Sneider, an initiate of Hollywood, brought a little more clarity in his newsletter, by publishing the quote from an anonymous source saying that the long post-production of The Mothership had prevented its realization since the film featured two children in important roles, and when creative problems forced production to return certain scenes, these new taken having been postponed, the children had oldly aged. Rather than being in a situation similar to that of Stranger Things, whose main players have gone from pre -adults to full -fledged adults, the streaming platform preferred to cancel everything.

Finally, neither Halle Berryneither Matthew Charmandid not speak publicly on the abandonment of the film. However, both were quickly entrusted with other Netflix projects: the first played in the action comedy The Union with Mark Wahlberg, while the second was appointed showrunner de Hosage, a mini-series with Suranne Jones and Julie Delpy, scheduled for August 21, 2025 on the platform.