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Netflix’s New Historical Epic Officially Hits Theaters 2 Months Before Streaming Debut

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Netflix premiered streaming television as we know it today. The company went from being a physical media rental service to a streaming hub, and finally a studio and hosting platform. Netflix is known for rigid rules around its content, with binge releases as its preferred method for new shows and seasons. And when it comes to movies, the streamer prefers to make them available to all subscribers globally at once. The problem is that it does submit some of its movies to the Academy for consideration, and the Academy also has its rules.

One of them is that a movie must have been released theatrically to be eligible for an Oscar. On some occasions, the streamer relaxes its rules and gives some movies a limited theatrical release. Marriage Story, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Irishman are Netflix movies that first premiered in theaters before becoming available for streaming. The Academy requires that eligible movies be released in commercial theaters for at least seven consecutive days in their countries of origin.

One of the buzziest films this year at Cannes is the Spanish epic La Bola Negra (The Black Ball), which won the Best Director Award. Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the film was acquired by Netflix, and the streaming service has been pushing it for numerous award categories. To make it eligible for some of the major categories it is being submitted for, Netflix has given La Bola Negra an unprecedented 47-day exclusive U.S. theatrical window, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The last film to get such a long release was Marriage Story in 2019, at 31 days. La Bola Negra officially hits US theaters on October 16 before being available to stream on Netflix globally on December 2.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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What Is ‘La Bola Negra’ About?

Spanning nearly a century, the film “tells the story of three men whose lives are intimately connected through desire, pain, and inheritance, across three different eras — 1932, 1937, and 2017.” The queer drama was directed by the Spanish directing duo nicknamed Los Javis because they were romantic partners with the same first name. They co-wrote the screenplay with Alberto Conejero. The 157-minute musical drama stars newcomer Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau (Elite), Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy), and Penélope Cruz (The Invite), among others. Critics seem generally impressed with the film, giving it an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Watch La Bola Negra in theaters beginning October 16 before it hits Netflix on December 2. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.


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Release Date

September 25, 2026

Runtime

155 minutes

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Director

Javier Ambrossi

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Producers

Jorge Pezzi

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Cast

  • Guitarricadelafuente

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    Sebastian

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