Netflix’s David Kosse Talks Drawing Top Talent For Streamer’s European Film Push & What’s On Deck
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Amid its continuing drive to ramp up local feature productions, Netflix has a host of ambitious titles coming out of Europe in the next year.
Already, Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-shortlisted The Hand Of God launched on the service in late 2021, hitting the Top 10 in 11 countries, while ahead are films from such directors as Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Louis Leterrier, Romain Gavras, Edward Berger, Roar Uthaug and Oscar winner Sébastian Lelio, among others.
Currently in production for later down the pike are J.A. Bayona’s Society Of The Snow and the Spanish feature spinoff of Netflix hit series Bird Box.Former Universal, Film4 and STX executive David Kosse took on the role of VP of International Film at Netflix in 2019 with a mandate to oversee international film production and acquisitions and a focus on making and acquiring non-English language movies for the streaming site.
Across the years, he has developed strong talent relationships and says part of the strategy at Netflix this year is to focus on “big filmmakers.” He tells me, “I love the variety of everything we’re doing and I’m really pleased that the number of filmmakers that we set out to work with two or three years ago from Ed (Berger) to Paolo (Sorrentino) to Juan Antonio (Bayona) to getting Balt (Kormakur) to do something, Jeunet, Gavras… We’ve managed to have a really broad list of these filmmakers.”Has it been difficult to sway talent to make movies for streaming?
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