Just two years after being introduced to Netflix throughout the world, the Hungarian award-winning black and white film Curtiz will shortly be removed.
Curtiz’s Netflix website now shows removal dates, including a “Last day to watch on Netflix” note for March 24th, indicating that it will be deleted on March 25th, 2022.
The film follows the aggressive and arrogant film director Michael Curtiz as he deals with studio politics and family turmoil during the tumultuous production of “Casablanca” in 1942, directed by Tamas Yvan Topolanszky. All of this is happening as America prepares to enter World War II.
The plot is based on genuine events, which are detailed in this article from The Irish Times as well as in the film itself.
Zsuzsanna Bak wrote Curtiz, which stars Ferenc Lengyel and Evelin Dobos. The film is primarily in English and Hungarian.
The film follows in the footsteps of David Fincher’s subsequent film Mank, which chronicled the making of Citizen Kane. Netflix had a lot more success with that picture, winning two Academy Awards. However, how well it did on Netflix is a matter of contention.
Curtiz initially shown in Canada in September 2019 at a film festival. It went on to be shown in a number of festivals throughout the world, including in the United States, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. The Boston International Film Festival and the Burbank International Film Festival both gave it honors.
Netflix purchased the global rights to the film in 2020 and released it on March 25th, 2020 with little fanfare.
Regrettably, the rights we now know were only purchased for a few years, and they are now scheduled to expire all over the world.
Although the departure of Netflix Originals isn’t especially surprising, it does highlight how brief some of these films are on Netflix.
The notion that anything is a Netflix Original just because it is a Netflix Original is likely half the problem here. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.