Seven years ago, Netflix had the perfect opportunity to kick off a brilliant new movie franchise, but we’re still waiting for the intriguing story to be developed. Over the years, Netflix has developed some of the best movie and TV series and franchises for its streaming services, including huge hits such as Stranger Things, Marvel Television’s Defenders Saga, Squid Game, Enola Holmes, and more. One, however, has been left in the dust, even though it presented huge opportunities for storytelling in an interesting and unique post-apocalyptic world.
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2018 marked a banner year for Netflix’s original movie releases, with the likes of Mute, The Cloverfield Paradox, How It Ends, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Cam, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and more, including Academy Award winner Roma, all hitting the streamer seven years ago. Some of these stories have been continued in sequels and franchise expansions, but the final Netflix movie released in 2018 has been all but forgotten. Bird Box hit Netflix on December 21, 2018, and marked a fantastic page-to-screen adaptation, but Netflix has been unsure of what to do in the years since.
Bird Box Could Have Kicked-Off Netflix’s Best New Franchise in 2018
Adapted from Josh Malerman’s 2014 novel of the same name, Bird Box followed reluctantly-pregnant Malorie Hayes (Sandra Bullock) as she navigates a world suddenly and inexplicably overrun by invisible entities that cause people to kill themselves if they look at them. Bird Box shocked audiences in December 2018, becoming the most-watched movie on the platform at the time, but Netflix failed to properly capitalize on the movie’s popularity and influence. Back in 2021, Deadline suggested Bird Box’s first and only standalone sequel could have been “the first of multiple local-language Bird Box spinoffs,” but this hasn’t come to fruition.
The opportunities for stories to be told in the world of Bird Box are practically endless. The sequel confirmed that the events of the first movie were worldwide, so the idea of exploring separate stories from groups of survivors around the world would have been genius. This would have distanced Bird Box from other post-apocalyptic franchises, which, at the time, remained quite insular and intimate in feeling — The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has since branched out. It’s a shame we haven’t met more survivors being tormented by creatures they can’t see, especially after the release of a strong sequel.
Bird Box’s Only Sequel Expanded the Franchise in a Very Interesting Way
Bird Box Barcelona hit Netflix in July 2023 as the first attempt to expand the Bird Box franchise around the globe. While it received a mixed response from critics and audiences alike, Bird Box Barcelona was a strong continuation of the story, introducing new characters in very different situations — including following Sebastián (Mario Casas), a man who has seen the entities, and now travels around getting others to open their eyes, which leads to many suicides. This was a fantastic twist that proved just how rich the Bird Box franchise could be.
Bird Box Barcelona began to realize the franchise’s plans for global reach, but nothing has been done with the series since. Bird Box Barcelona’s ending, which saw the military capture an entity and a “seer,” perfectly set up future instalments. The idea of an antibody or more being revealed about the entities’ true intentions is very exciting, but it’s unclear whether this franchise will be continued. It took five years after Bird Box for a sequel to be released, so we might have to wait a few more years for Bird Box 3, but we hope it happens.
Bird Box Already Has the Perfect Story For a Sequel
While a sequel to Bird Box and Bird Box Barcelona could follow on from the ending of the latter, it could also adapt Josh Malerman’s own Bird Box sequel novel, Malorie. Released in 2020 after the movie hit Netflix, Malorie forces Malorie and her children, Tom and Olympia, out of their safe haven of the school for the blind when entities break in. 12 years later, they are living in a Jewish summer camp, but venture out on a new adventure when Malorie hears that her parents may be alive in another settlement.
Malorie was a fantastic sequel to Bird Box, so could form the story for a live-action sequel, too. Along their journey, Malorie and her now-teenage kids do learn that some have captured and experimented on the entities, just like the military were at the end of Bird Box Barcelona. Introducing this to the live-action franchise could create a bridge between the movies, while Bird Box 3 could replicate the circumstances that made the original so great. We’d love to see Sandra Bullock back in the blindfold for an honest-to-goodness Bird Box sequel, so Netflix needs to make it happen.
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