Ended up being dumped on Netflix.
From Variety:
Legendary’s Thomas Tull is very high on the project and sees it as a franchise...
This movie never bombed so whatever caused it to be dumped had nothing to do with it and everything to do with the studio behind it making other bad films like Warcraft.
shareTrue, so true.
Case and point is the Dead Pool movie.
But Spectral was, well, surprisingly good. Maybe it was the 'lower' expectations of a netflix movie but it was good.
Has nothing to do with the movie qualities itself. The movie was deliberatly shot to bid for government funding, mostly through US Propaganda And Censorship Dept. and, possibly, even some DoD funding as well (re: Transformers franchise). No doubt, some off-the-record preliminary agreements were secured. However, the US regime's propaganda priorities have shifted rather dramatically in the recent period and the flavor of BS that's pushed in this movie suddenly was relegated back to second or third priority.
A keen eye (or ear) will notice that some last-moment efforts were made to re-adopt the movie to the realities of today, but this was an afterthought and definitely not enough to save the project. The PCD denied the funding, the flick got dumped on Netflix.