The new series “Penelope,” premiering Tuesday on Netflix, opens with a 16-year-old girl dancing at an outdoor silent disco. Feeling out of place, she tries to push past the awkwardness of dancing in a room with her summer camp peers. But Penelope’s attentions always drift to the surrounding wilderness.
It’s a quieter start than the typical show premiering on the streaming home of the black comedy-thriller “Baby Reindeer,” but its impact lingers. And creators Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn hope their thought-provoking teen drama can show the industry that middle-budget television still has a place in an IP-ridden ecosystem — even if creators have to first fund the projects on their own.
“This is the project that I felt most passionately needed to be made and that could be, maybe, my legacy,” Duplass told TheWrap. “So while it was way more expensive than anything I’ve self-financed, and [it was] f—king terrifying to do this in a time when the industry is, quite frankly, in the s–tter, I just knew we had to do it.”
Throughout the show’s festival run, Duplass noted how “Penelope” served as an experiment to prove the benefits of developing an independent production model for television — both for filmmakers hoping to produce original ideas outside of the studio system, and for distributors looking to spend less on content.
TheWrap spoke with Duplass and Eslyn about making the eight-episode drama on their own and getting it in Netflix’s library, and looked deeper at how realistic the model would be to emulate for filmmakers who aren’t named Duplass, who benefitted from being able to partially finance “Penelope” using money earned from “The Morning Show.”
“There’s no question that even Netflix can’t spend as much on content as they used to,” Hub Entertainment Research founder Jon Giegengack told TheWrap. “This [type of deal] makes sense for streamers because it ensures consumers can find stuff that isn’t cookie cutter in their libraries … and it helps shift perspective of the platform, just because they offer these types of indie projects through their service.”
Netflix declined to comment for this story.
Making the show
Duplass made a name in indie films before developing lower-budget series for HBO — including the critically acclaimed “Room 104,” “Togetherness” and “Somebody Somewhere.” He also landed mainstream acting roles like his Emmy-nominated gig on “The Morning Show.” He wrote the majority of “Penelope” during the COVID lockdowns, inspired by how the world slowed down during the pandemic, as well as by the desire to step away from screens and seek the great outdoors.
He also wanted to explore the pressure he saw his teenage daughters, Ora and Molly, facing in the era of social media from a fresh perspective — following young Penelope as she left her old life behind to connect with nature.
The series premiere picks up the morning after the disco, as Penelope goes on a tranquil solo hike. Her mother interrupts the bliss with a text, reminding her they must head home so Penelope can make it back in time for an SAT prep session. But Penelope silences her phone and keeps walking. She later buys camping equipment before hopping into a moving train toward a new life living in a national park in the Pacific Northwest.
Hollywood wasn’t in a place to help Duplass bring his ambitious show to life. In the midst of industry-wide contraction, streamers have less room today to invest in what is known as mid-budget television. While producers declined to comment on the budget for “Penelope,” the genre is typically fronted by original premises from up-and-coming auteurs that become critically acclaimed cult classics, like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag,” the Duplass Brothers’ previous HBO credits or Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You.” Some shows turn into bona fide hits for their distributors. The global phenomenon “Baby Reindeer,” which premiered with minor pomp and circumstance in April, grew into one of Netflix’s most-watched titles of 2024, winning the Best Limited Series Emmy in September.
After streamers and networks passed on “Penelope,” Duplass and Eslyn, president of Duplass Brothers Productions, decided to press on. They treated the project like one of the myriad independent films their company has produced in the past, with Duplass using what he called his “‘Morning Show’ money” to finance the project and Eslyn directing all eight episodes in eight weeks. Then they took the finished show into the market.
“It was an eight-week shoot … the biggest day I was directing scenes from six different episodes in one day showing the journey of this girl visually,” Eslyn told TheWrap. “It felt like camping while shooting a movie.”
The plan worked. “Penelope” landed U.S. distribution at Netflix in May, after premiering its pilot episode at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and hosting screenings at South by Southwest in Texas and Colorado’s SeriesFest, among others.
Unlike a Netflix original like “Baby Reindeer,” “Penelope” is a licensed title that will debut without Netflix branding or promotion. It will be available only to U.S. subscribers.
The deal also includes Duplass Brothers Productions keeping control of the property and holding onto its VOD rental rights as they sell the indie series both domestically and internationally.
The creators also get to decide whether to renew the show for a second season themselves.
“We’ve basically absolved [Netflix] of the responsibility to make us their flagship show,” Duplass said at SeriesFest in May after announcing the acquisition. He described his pitch to Netflix. “‘Just put us on the service. We’re going to sign a very short deal with you guys, and we’re going to see how it does.’ That way at Netflix, you’re not taking an oversized, outsized risk on the show. You’re not going to be pissed off if it doesn’t work and turn around and say, ‘Independent television is never going to work. We’re not doing it again.’”
Can other filmmakers follow suit?
Now that Netflix is the industry’s streaming behemoth, the onus is on the streamer to deliver on the perception that the platform will “never run out of things to watch, that there’s always something new I haven’t seen yet,” Giegengack told TheWrap.
As for startup filmmakers, both Giegengack and Duplass acknowledged the reality that the traditional indie filmmaker likely can’t self-finance a project like “Penelope” on their own dime. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t find a way to tailor the creation of their own original project for their own means, and push for an acquisition or development of the project themselves.
“There are other ways to make really interesting, independently made TV,” Duplass said, citing his “Creep Tapes” series set for release Nov. 15 on AMC+ and Shudder. “I’m really hopeful that we’re going to see audiences complaining about the lack of interesting television as Hollywood’s contraction continues. And I’m hopeful that we and an army of like-minded others can fill that gap.
“I am willing to lose at least a good chunk of my shirt in the process,” he added.
For Giegengack, it goes down to self-marketing — like musicians who put their early projects on SoundCloud, or the ones who find success with no label attached.
“It would have been way easier to make ‘The Blair Witch Project’ today than it would have been in 1999,” he said, referring to the horror film made for $750,000 that earned nearly $250 million at the box office. “You can use your social following, which is now a component of your power, in addition to money.”
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