Gorillaz movie on Netflix has been cancelled, Damon Albarn says

A scheduled full-length Netflix movie on Gorillaz has been cancelled, according to the digital band's co-founder Damon Albarn.

Back in November 2021, Albarn revealed that after "many incarnations", writing had begun on the project with the streaming giant. "We’re having a writing session in Malibu this afternoon," he said at the time. "It’s really exciting to do that. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. It’s been through so many incarnations...this Gorillaz doing a movie. Honestly."

Now, fifteen months on, Albarn has revealed that the film has been pulled. According to a new report by Pitchfork, the English artist - who also helms bands including Blur - told Dutch-language Belgian magazine Humo that the cancellation was the result of "cutbacks and staff shuffling" at Netflix.

According to the Humo story, Albarn and fellow Gorillaz co-founder Jamie Hewlett had been working on realising the movie as far back as 2002. It also reports that the cancellation led Gorillaz to make their new album, 'Cracker Island', which is released this Friday, 24th February.

“It will never happen," Albarn told Humo. "The streaming platform for which we were making the film has withdrawn. They started to panic because they were making too much content and decided to cut back on their movie offerings."

“And, as has been classic Hollywood practice for decades, the guy we were working with has moved on to another company," he added. "From then on you have lost your guardian angel, and there seems to be a bad smell hanging on you. Hollywood is quite territorial: if a new guy comes along, he must and will have a different opinion, even if he secretly agrees with his predecessor.”

Earlier this month, Albarn shared a piano tribute to the late De La Soul artist Trugoy The Dove in the wake of his passing. It came a week after Gorillaz unveiled a new video for their single 'Silent Running ft. Adeleye Omotayo'.