Netflix announced today that it has signed on to produce Michael Bay’s upcoming movie Six Underground, and it will star Ryan Reynolds.
The movie is an original idea from Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The plot of the film wasn’t officially announced, but The Hollywood Reporter says it’s about a group of six billionaires who form a professional team to take down bad guys after they fake their deaths. Deadline calls it “a high testosterone mission movie.”
Netflix said it will be released worldwide in 2019 with production set to begin this summer.
Bay’s last seven movies were made at Paramount. The studio almost got Six Underground, but Netflix signed on to the massive budget, according to Variety. The publication puts the budget at $125 million while Deadline says it’s around $150 million. According to Variety, Netflix’s biggest budget so far was given to Martin Scorsese. The acclaimed director spent $106 million making his upcoming movie The Irishman.
Netflix doesn’t require a huge press commitment, which is one of the reasons why Reynolds is on the movie, according to Variety. They say it will give Reynolds more time to work on what’s next for his Deadpool character.
It was first reported in March by Variety that Bay was developing Six Underground and might next be helming an adaption of the novel Robopocalypse that was once to be directed by Steven Spielberg. It was also reported in February by The Hollywood Reporter that Bay was in talks to direct a DC Comics movie based on the character Lobo.
Bay released his fifth Transformers movie, The Last Stand, in June. According to Box Office Mojo, that movie ended up as the lowest grossing entry of the franchise by over $100 million. And that’s without adjusting for inflation. The filmmaker recovered with a producer credit on John Krasinski’s horror blockbuster A Quiet Place, which was released in April.
Meanwhile, Reynolds, Reese and Wernick are coming off the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated movie with the release of Deadpool 2 on Friday.
