Whose Bright idea was this? Why Will Smith's $100 million 'orc cop' thriller could be Netflix's biggest mistake yet

December 22 marks the release of a $100 million special effects blockbuster from the director of Suicide Squad and starring Will Smith. You may not have heard of it. It’d be fair to assume you haven’t. For Bright, a buddy cop fantasy movie set in a world of humans co-existing with orcs and fairies, is launching on Netflix, and could be the streaming service’s biggest risk yet.

Starring Smith and Joel Edgerton as a pair of LAPD cops (one human, one orc) pursuing a magic wand wanted by an array of supernatural villains, Bright is Netflix’s first major stab at the sort of glossy, CGI-heavy feature film more typically made by a major studio and released in cinemas. Because while Netflix has entirely shifted the landscape of television since it began producing original content in 2013, it has yet to achieve much of a foothold when it comes to film.

Quite why they’ve entrusted such an honour to...