Netflix’s latest in-house blockbuster only arrived on Friday, but subscribers were so taken with Project Power that not only did it shoot straight to the top of the streaming service’s Top 10 most-watched list in less than 24 hours, but almost as soon as the credits started rolling fans were heading online to demand a sequel.
With the company hardly being shy about their intentions to have some exclusive big name properties of their own, the superhero thriller seems like an ideal candidate to launch a multi-film series thanks to a unique concept that still has plenty of mileage left, not to mention the modest by modern standards $85 million budget.
Project Power may have wrapped up a self-contained story, but it deliberately left the door open for the three major characters to return, which is no doubt something Netflix will already be looking into based on the early numbers. One of the more frustrating aspects of the movie though was that it felt like the surface was barely scratched when it came to exploring the mythology and how the mysterious drug itself came to be, but in a recent interview, writer Mattson Tomlin seemed to acknowledge that they were holding some things back in the hope of making sequels.
“The animal kingdom is so nuts. And there’s a bunch of stuff that we came up with that didn’t end up in the movie that you know, will see the light of day if we are so lucky to do a sequel. We ended up where we ended up in, in large part because we wanted to be able to go somewhere in the event that we’re lucky enough to do sequel. For me, Power is an urban legend and people aren’t quite sure. And that means there’s a very exciting opportunity. How does the world change once everybody knows that this exists? It will change the fabric of how all of life is potentially lived. And I think that that’s a really cool place to go.”
There’s already been rumors of a spinoff series that could focus on the effect the drug has outside the confines of New Orleans, and at this point a feature-length sequel feels like a foregone conclusion as well. After all, there’s so much more to mine from the idea of a drug that gives the user superhuman abilities for five minutes at a time that there could be enough material to spawn multiple follow-ups, and that kind of high-concept pitch already gives Project Power a head-start over the rest of Netflix’s would-be franchises.