The guns in Spectral were created by Weta. Image: Legendary.

Spectral, a new movie starring James Badge Dale, Emily Mortimer and Bruce Greenwood, sounds like Black Hawk Down meets Ghostbusters. It was supposed to get a theatrical release over the summer but now, it’s coming to Netflix on December 9.


Directed by Nic Mathieu, Spectral is about “a brilliant DARPA scientist [who] embarks on a deadly mission with a Special Ops team of Delta Force soldiers into a battle-scarred, war-torn city, where mysterious phantom aggressors code-named Spectral have been causing inexplicable civilian deaths,” according to Deadline. It was produced by Legendary Pictures.

A team of ghostbusting, high-tech soldiers certainly sounds like a cool premise and the cast is really good. What’s the bad news here? Well, if this all sounds oddly familiar it’s because Spectral has been on the theatrical release calendar for a year. Universal was going to release it in August but they never promoted it. Then, in June, it was quietly taken off the schedule with no official explanation. That probably means it’s bad.


Like, really bad.

For Netflix, it doesn’t really matter if the film is good or not because you’re already paying them. The streaming service just wants to give their viewers options, especially original ones they can’t get anywhere else. As for Universal, who had just released Warcraft in the U.S. to major box office disappointment, they probably just cut their losses.

We’ll all find out on December 9.

[Deadline]