Fox has reportedly asked Fear Street director Leigh Janiak to write (and potentially rewrite) scripts that she could shoot back-to-back and release in a similar format. Think Lord of the Rings, but on a dramatically condensed time scale.

It'd undoubtedly be a pricey experiment for Fox, but it's easy to see why the company would try: if it pays off, it could lead to people watching every movie in a franchise instead of losing interest in the years they usually wait between releases. It might also reduce the temptation to wait for home releases if you know you can see everything over the course of a single summer.

There are a few potential problems with this strategy, of course. To start, there's simple logistics: it's still easier, quicker and cheaper to tap "next episode" at home than it is to venture to the theater multiple times. It's also a big bet that the movies themselves are good enough to sustain interest. As the Guardian observes, Universal is likely regretting its commitment to nine Dark Universe movies after watching the first title (2017's The Mummy) bomb critically and commercially. If a Netflix or Hulu show fails, it's not a horrendous expense. If the first movie in a short-release trilogy fails, however, that's a gigantic budget thrown out the window with no time to tweak the sequels before they arrive. Ironically, the Fear Street strategy could wind up underscoring online video's advantages in low production costs and immediate gratification.