When you see that the content holder make it harder and harder for Netflix to license their content, it makes senses to invest so much money on creating their own content.
It seems in the end, we're really returning to the cable era.
Be ready for packages giving you access to Netflix, Amazon, and channels...
For what i know, that is already happening in NL with HBO Go. It disappeared from the market as separate, independent service and now only available via bundle package of one of NLs largest cable providers, Ziggo.
At least in the states, HBO Go was always bundled with a cable subscription. HBO Now is the standalone streaming product, although standalone is a bit of a stretch because it's frustratingly tied to some other platform's billing system.
Ziggo also replaced their in house streaming service with Netflix directly on the cable boxes because there was no chance of them being able to compete. I believe Liberty Global (the worlds largest cable company and owners of Ziggo) is planning to do the same across Europe.
I think that Netflix (and Amazon) is trying to create enough content that you don't need anyone else. That would certainly justify their spending, and give them tremendous leverage against the other players.
It also puts them in a better negotiating position. They still want and need the content but if they're producing their own, it allows them to be more selective in what they take on.
As opposed to Spotify, which only acts as a distribution platform, and therefore plays nicely with all labels. Imagine if Spotify would "become" a label and start producing music directly with artists... They'd quickly be shunned by the record labels
Netflix didn't have original content for a long time, but they still had a lot of trouble with the studios. Their original content was (probably) a response to that.
I thought this number seemed absolutely nuts to begin with, but actually, given their ~100 million subscribers, it's pretty much inline with what the BBC might spend in the same sort of set up.
As an observer, what still seems odd to me is the low number of shows or movies they are producing with that massive budget - last year "The Get Down" apparently cost $16 million per episode while the entire, huge hit, first season of "Stranger Things" cost $13 million.
I would have thought that would inspire them to look for more of these low budget, low risk, big payoff shows, especially when you run a subscription service - surely a series that people binge over 2 weeks, with the potential for more seasons to keep people subscribing is better for you than a one time film? Nope, $100 Million on a single film this year.
Well, Netflix is one of the most data driven companies we know of. Maybe they see something that we don't? Also, some stories inherently require significant amount of money to produce and there is nothing that you can do about it. Sure you can avoid spending money on such shows, but the last thing you want is to be known for your low quality shows.
Yes, I think you're right, it's probably better to be known for your 1 or 2 high quality hits and take a few losses overall, than to be known for low quality shows.
That on top of the fact they can use data to minimise the risk must mean it's a realistic option.
> As an observer, what still seems odd to me is the low number of shows or movies they are producing with that massive budget - last year "The Get Down" apparently cost $16 million per episode while the entire, huge hit, first season of "Stranger Things" cost $13 million.
You think that's crazy? They paid Dave Chappelle $60 million for _3 standup specials_.
The first one was pretty good, but that second one left no real impression. It felt like he was using more clever humour in the first, and just went full on shock value for the second.
Few things are more subjective than humour. I watched the first one and I'm half way through the second. I thought what I've seen of them was pretty good.
Maybe they are planning to release the film in movie theaters later? License it to other subscription services a month or two after they release it on their platform?
I believe that is a lot to gain in branding and awareness from top notch movies. When I started to see high quality (ie expensive) productions with a-level Hollywood actors (eg House of Cards), it changed my perception.
I believe the next step is having "blockbusters" feature movies, with top notch CGI, a-level actors, maybe some Oscar contenders.
My impression is that low risk, big payoff shows would be optimizing for a local maxima. Big bets like the Will Smith movie might take them to a new maxima. And Netflix is basically a success history about reaching a new maxima one after another since its beginning.
They'll have multiple tiered production teams just like finance; small cap, middle market, and large multinationals. And also probably have specialists for market product that are cross tier.
Not sure if you've heard but Manchester By The Sea was a production affiliated with Amazon Prime, and it got quite a few nominations and won an award in 2016. So, you're kind of already right - the outliers of Amazon and Netflix have potential to get into such conversations.
>I believe the next step is having "blockbusters" feature movies, with top notch CGI, a-level actors, maybe some Oscar contenders.
That is probably too expensive unless they release to theaters first.
What they could do is create the missing midrange movie that Hollywood just doesn't make anymore. Hollywood makes huge expensive movies and indie studios make cheap movies. Netflix could make the 40 million dollar style of movie that nobody makes anymore.
In fact, they sort of are, they just do it in a longer form.
Long shot, but if anyone from Netflix sees this, I'm looking for finishing funds to complete one of Sir Christopher Lee's last films, The Hunting of the Snark, based on the Lewis Carroll story and I would be happy to exclusively license it to Netflix.
I am surprised that you would have to post it here. Don't they already provide some way to contact them? Given the small number of movies and shows that get produced, I expect that they would have responded to everyone.
As far as I know, there isn't an open channel to pitch projects to Netflix. This is because 1) they would get overwhelmed by pitches for projects and 2) because most studios don't accept unsolicited pitches for legal reasons (so that someone who sent them a pitch doesn't later sue Netflix for producing a similar project.
So I think you still have to go the more traditional route of knowing someone within the Netflix development department that you can pitch your project to. Or your agent/manager/producer will need to have that connection to get you in the door. I've been stuck in indie film limbo trying to finish this film because it has a lot of complicated visual effects (which are close to being finished) so I currently don't have a manager or agent who can help to get me in the door at Netflix.
have you considered trying to find out who in that department has recently _left_ Netflix? That way you can pretend you were in touch with them thereby promoting you from unsolicited to solicited.
by that time the foot is in the door. The rest of the approval will be based on the merit of the work itself.
Remember that if all salesmen had the ethics of developers.... well the world would actually be a much better place but if some do and some don't then those that don't are not seen. Something like that... its just the old cold calling salesman within me looking for ins :).
Maybe, but for me, I'd mark that person out in my mind as someone not to be trusted, and I'd be looking to get rid of that person post haste. Not only would would they be sneaky, but they'd be bad at being sneaky.
for sure but how else does one penetrate a clique? Perhaps one might find out under closer analysis that everyone got into the clique through such skulduggery.
Generally I would not recommend such behaviour but in regards to cliques and arbitrary walls where meritocracy is unwelcome I would recommend skulduggery.
Probably not if that guy used his sneakiness to make you a million dollars. A lot of initial faux paux can be forgiven when bank accounts are involved.
I should try to get in touch with Netflix via the proper channels, but it will probably be hard to get an agent or manager involved involved with my movie because it is a short film (17 min). I'm currently working on finishing up the visual effects myself, but when I saw this Netflix post on HN I thought I'd take a shot at seeing if my post might reach somebody inside Netflix that could help speed things up.
> That way you can pretend you were in touch with them thereby promoting you from unsolicited to solicited.
I noticed that you were getting downvoted and I am curious why.
Is it because people don't like what they think is the dishonesty of the idea?
Or because they don't think it will work?
Or?
I think it's a fine idea.
I have done similar things (not in pitching netflix) and it has worked. It's amazing how quick people are to criticize something that is foreign to how they operate or think idealistically the world should operate.
I do my best to browse lots of industry news, publications, comments, and occasional gossip like tales.
From what I've come across, Netflix solicits what it wants, it doesn't really "take pitches" as the business has run via Agents/Studios in the past. Rather, if some of the comments here are hitting accurately, Netflix has an idea for their show and then assembles the team to execute. That's quite a bit of a different relationship than Work-For-Hire type studio productions I think. Thus, it's another way they kind of alienate themselves from the industry, in that they are a "Don't call us, we'll call you" company.
If your idea really is worth a lot, you'd probably be better off starting with media-focused venture capital and indie production studios. That way, you could build the momentum required to make Netflix take you seriously.
This project is a short film that has already been shot/edited/scored and is nearly finished, but could use some additional funding to get the visual effects completed. It's a passion project that I think Christopher Lee and Lewis Carroll fans will enjoy seeing finished. I'm not really trying to "sell" the movie in the traditional sense, because I don't think it will ever recoup its costs. I'm just trying to get the movie across the finish line and out into the world, so it's sort of a different situation than most film/tv projects that are aggressively trying to make money.
I actually did a kickstarter campaign for the project a long time ago, but I think my kickstarter video could have been better and the campaign didn't reach its goal, so it wasn't funded. I may launch another kickstarter and try again at some point.
If you only need money to finish visual effects I'd say give Kickstarter another go. If you've got a decent edit of the movie ready you can use that to make a good video and even give backers access to the current version of the film when they pledge.
For what it's worth, I just tweeted Netflix about its availability. Who knows, maybe it'll catch the right person's attention at some point. I know the odds are next to nil, but what the heck. :)
Well, the sane way to distribute content when the only thing that has non-negligible costs is production, not distribution, [1] is to have some kind of infrastructure provider that provides distribution and billing and finances production. However having a monopoly has ugly economic effects and having a single entity that dictates media production has ugly social effects.
I guess both Amazon and Netflix try to capture precisely that role, in that case they could charge almost whatever they want while they are not forced by competition to have high quality (and therefore expensive) content. Plus I am afraid that the market tends to produce a monopoly, because a individual subscriber will look for the service that has more content.
[1] Hetzner currently charges EUR 1.40 / TB of additional traffic, so marginal distribution costs are in the range of EUR 10^-3 / Movie.
> Hetzner currently charges EUR 1.40 / TB of additional traffic, so marginal distribution costs are in the range of EUR 10^-3 / Movie.
you can't just use the traffic cost. also if they would on hetzner, their network would be so bad that nobody could've watch netflix. (not that the hetzner network is bad, but it wouldn't withstand the amount of traffic from netflix (especially inter-region traffic is not as cheap as it could be, and also they need to talk with amazon/google about their traffic ("public pricing" is 0,01 USD per GB)))
also there are other things that needs to be paid, servers, developers and other staff and stuff.
it's not just that you write 20 lines of code and put it on hetzner and can scale globally.
Of course not, but I am only using Hetzner as some measure of current network costs, because I know Hetzner pricing quite well. So of course I would additionally need server costs, staff, and so on. But if we assume that everything included we end up at a order of magnitude more, your .01 USD/GB, that is still a movie a day for the entire month before we really have to worry about distribution.
I'll let you in on a little secret: paying for bandwidth per usage is for suckers. People think this is the only way to pay for bandwidth, but it's really only cloud providers who charge like that (and make a fortune off the racket). If you buy bandwidth from upstream IP transit providers, or rent a server in almost any non-cloud datacenter, you pay for capacity (e.g. $0.50 / Mbps), not usage. That is, you pay for the size of the pipe, not the amount of data going through it. Once you factor in optimizations like peering with ISPs and cross connect caching, bandwidth costs go way down.
Also, in Netflix's case, they have a box containing terabytes of their most popular content sitting in almost every datacenter and peering with all major ISPs and backbone providers sharing the cross connect: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
I've liked some of netflix's original content - house of cards was the first - but a LOT of it is trash too. I don't doubt they have numbers that lead them to create these shows... but i question the scale of it sometimes. Of the netflix originals, i've only enjoyed a handful.
Meanwhile, I've enjoyed a number of "low-budget" shows they've had (like ice pilots) and a number of the kung-fu movies they have available. But to be fair, a LOT of the low-budget stuff they have is trash too.
It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content, to seem like they have a fuller collection, even if it's only a collection a raccoon would love. This, taken with the idea they tote of "having only the best performing people" displays a mismatch in cultural ideas and actual output.
For me, I want netflix to succeed because another content producer is a welcome addition to the scene, and i hope they stay independent and don't get bought up by disney. I know in a few years they'll have a collection of original content to rival the older players.
> Of the netflix originals, i've only enjoyed a handful.
> It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content
OR, they're just targeting demographics that don't include you. "I don't enjoy [thing] therefore it's padding" seems like kind of an ego-centric worldview to me.
Haven't they even talked about how not having a fixed number of viewing hours means they can more easily target niche audiences?
They've talked about making content for $100k that a small number watch and making content for $5M that a number 500x that watch.
They know exactly what they're doing and every comment on this article in HN right now shows you that.
One person says they hate something and it's crap and the next person tells them that they're wrong. Entertainment is subjective netflix has numbers to back up their spends.
Bear in mind that 90% of "regular" TV is trash (to me), but a huge number of people enjoy it. They aren't just padding their content, they're also catering to a wide audience, which means lots of people will hate lots of their content, but lots of people will also like some of their content
Take a look at soap operas or telenovelas. To some, it looks cheesy and the acting is over the top. But that's not why people watch them -- they watch them because the shows are a microcosm of real life.
Actually, no, a huge number of people do not enjoy regular TV. The highest viewership series last year "The Big Bang Theory" had over 90% of the population uninterested in watching a free show.
Its at the point where if you meet someone and you're a fan of a non-top tier TV show, unless you met in an echo chamber, the odds of someone being your astrological symbol or in some cases having the same birthday are higher than them being a fan of your pet show.
TV is no longer culturally relevant, not like it was decades ago. Nobody watches that stuff.
IMO the fact that they can record "trash" is what will make them ultimately successful - their shows can target very limited demographics while still making profit. While on network TV your prime-time show MUST cater to as wide audience , Neflix doesn't have to. They can make Sense 8, Jessica Jones, Kimmy Schmidt, cooking shows, etc. etc. Each of those will only appeal to a part of audience, but because of that it can be more targeted and creative than watered down inoffensive prime-time schlock.
The fact that they're pretty much the only ones (with the exception of Amazon Prime lately which is shooting themselves in the food for not providing apps for Android TV and other platforms) that are open to world-wide audiences, they're in for a huge success.
Meanwhile, HBO and others still rather show "Not available in your country" than collect 10EUR/month from several TENS of millions of subscribers outside US.
It seems that they can make trash and as long as it convinces more people to subscribe to netflix it ends up meeting their bottom line. And I guess they have figured out that that is what works, as unlike a normal tv station per show ratings don't matter if it is more shows that brings people in.
I agree strongly with this. I lost all interest in Big Bang Theory when they started appealing to a wider audience.
Also we have Amazon Prime but rarely use it for the videos. It's a pain to watch except on our one tv with a computer hooked up to it. It's also the only video app we have that we can't stream to Chromecast. Is that $20 device really worth losing viewers over?
Netflix (and amazon) are in a powerful position to analyze and understand what people really want in a way that cable and networks (remember those) simply can't match.
Providing "hits" to relatively small demographics over and over again, I think, might make more business sense than going up against the more experienced competition for mass-appeal.
"Stranger Things" is a good example, it was a pitch-perfect, nuanced thriller series. I dare say it was an 80's period piece. That's niche. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but damn it was cool.
By appealing to the long tail, Netflix can make smaller demographics VERY HAPPY with their product, one demographic at a time. This is perhaps better than trying to please everyone at once with a blockbuster hit.
I think you just hit the nail on the head - for years and years, the MPAA and RIAA business model is "Bet Big and Big Wins Cover Big Losses" and there wasn't much market share or ability to use a different approach.
If there's not as much big margin, but conversely lacking a major bleed out of funds by failure, it's a much more even, perhaps sustainable model as tastes change in entertainment (or by expanding into other regions).
Lilyhammer is prototypical of what I now expect from Netflix originals -- a good hook and solid first season, followed by hours upon hours of the same thing dragged out ad infinitum.
I'm really disappointed it ended. I was really enjoying it. I admit it wasn't as good at the end as it was at the start but it was still good enough to keep me watching and entertained. I'm still holding out hope of a return.
You could say the same thing for just about any show.
Granted maybe you get farther than season 1 (Game of Thrones up to season 3 for me, for example) but TV very much fits with "die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."
> I've liked some of netflix's original content - house of cards was the first
Erm.... House of Cards (on Netflix) is an American remake of the British show of the same name that was shown on the BBC in 1990? Not exactly "original content"
There was three parts with 4 episodes each, for a total of 12 episodes. All very good. Sounds like you may have missed the next two, definitely worth watching.
Have you actually watched both versions of the show? Sure they share a basic theme and a few plot points from the original are used in the first season of the US version, but the US version quickly becomes its entirely own thing and calling it a remake is simply inaccurate.
That being said I do feel the US version has very much overstayed its welcome.
Yes, I have watched the UK one(s), and the first season of the US one. The US first season is very similar to the UK one. Some "localisation" changes are to be expected, and it's still called a "remake" in that sense, at least at the start.
Rounding up to $10 a person subscription, Netflix can comfortably spend a million dollars on a show even if it thinks only 100,000 people, and no one else ever, are going to enjoy it. When they have almost a 100 million subscribers, they can basically make 1000 shows, each of which will be thought of as "great" by 0.1 million people and "trash" by 99.9 million people.
That only works if you have a great way to help people find just the stuff they'll like and hide the rest. If they hundreds of series that are "trash" to me and a handful that are "great" to me, I'll probably end up watching a few of the trash ones first and then canceling the service.
That's true, and the bad is stuff is unusually bad, but at the same time my monthly fee stays the same. Meanwhile, at a movie theater a bad movie costs me and my wife about $100 with babysitting, parking, and modest concessions like a soda and a box of raisenettes. Netflix-style services simply are more forgiving because of the small monthly flat-fee. Bad content is easy to skip and you're not being punished financially as long as good stuff is still being created to offset the bad.
I won't fault a 25% fail rate. Hollywood as a whole, or even if we look at individual well-funded studios, must be shooting at an 75% fail rate here.
I got rid of sky last year. I was paying a multiple of what netflix costs and had to put up with what seemed like 5 minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of a show. It made GOT completely unwatchable.
I am under no illusions about how netflix might behave if they ever achieve a monolithic dominance but so far it's great.
Sky is a useless hog of idiocy, just selling lots and lots of advertising. Most cringeworthy thing to tell about is Sky Bundesliga (the german soccer league). Its the only way to see the most popular sport in germany. You pay for Sky Entertainment, which you MUST have to get the basic soccer package (no other sports or international soccer) which already amounts to a whopping 42€/Month. When you have that, you can either watch via Cable at your specific address, or can use the abysmal Sky Go system. That runs on Silverlight(sic!) and allows only 3 different devices in 6 Months to connect.
When you surpassed THOSE hurdles, you need to hope that Silverlight works on your OS (good luck Linux), doesn't crap out (what a coincidence with unmaintained software).
Then you can watch the "Game". Except the commercials extend to 30s before the ref starts the game, during the game you get 2-3 times a framed commercial, the commenting person has to advertise multiple of sky's services during the game, the half time is 12 out of 15 minutes commercials, and the second half is the same.
Disgusting. The 2-3 games a year I watch, I freely admit to using other means of watching.
Sounds about right and that is what will kill it I think.
I'd probably still be a customer but for the ads.
When I first got sky I naively thought it would have none.
But in fact Sky has more ads than free-to-air commercial tv in the UK does. .
You should see how bad American Football is. $50 USD for "Sunday Ticket" and literally half the game is advertisements. Its gotten so bad the NFL actually took notice that viewership is dropping.
Sky show nfl in the UK and for a lot of the breaks over there they have a studio discussion of the last play. So they show maybe half the amount of ads you have to watch there and it's still way too many.
As someone who watches a lot of football, Bundesliga and international competitions like Champions League and Euro League, I share your pain. Since Sky lost the broadcast licenses to La Liga and Premier League, I subscribed to DAZN, a legal streaming platform for international sports, and despite several flaws it's better than Sky's abysmal online service and offers a very fair price.
So what differentiates them from HBO? I am confused. With HBO Go it's Cable going Internet and with Netflix it's Internet going Cable. Just that both distribute over the Web
I can actually order and watch Netflix in EU (for 12EUR/month for 4k/HDR). I'm not allowed to pay for HBO Now (which is even more expensive at 15EUR/month and features only HBO shows) and HBO Go requires me to subscribe to a min 50EUR/month cable service full of crappy content.
Well the gap is certainly smaller now, but remember there was a time not too long ago where HBO straight up refused to do online, stand-alone content. Sites like http://www.takemymoneyhbo.com/ were started just by people who wanted to watch the content the way they already were on services like Netflix.
The other thing that differentiates it from traditional cable is the experience. Because of a package deal, I also have cable for the next year, and it is bombed out and depleted. Not just in terms of content, but in terms of when that content is on and the very UX of the interface. The amount of lag changing channels on a modern digital receiver from a major cable company would get you fired as a web developer if your website lagged the same. It is truly remarkable.
There's a good Reed Hastings quote from a couple years ago: "Our job is to become HBO before HBO can become us". Seems like the market ended up about where he predicted.
Netflix still has a huge advantage though, in that they are available internationally while HBO Now is only available in a handful of countries.
To me, it seems like Hollywood is betting everything on 3D movies in the fantasy/superhero/werewolf/supernatural abilities/animated/zombie genre(s).
That's roughly 3/4 of what the three cinema chains in my city show. That leaves some 25 percent to the remotely realistic movies - the ones with characters and stories that could be true, at least in a distant future. There are nights where the only movies the cinemas show, are fantastic ones. Where the only cinema experience would involve wearing 3D glasses and watching childish characters save the world.
Personally, I am fine with the establishment taking some beating. But I sure hope there will be more than just a handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
The landscape of video entertainment is being reshaped. Over the last two or three decades, content production has gotten much cheaper, easier and faster. In the last decade or so, content distribution has gotten cheaper, easier and faster.
As a result, what we've called "television" is now a place where long-form dramatic stories can unfold. Since it's more affordable to produce, content which can appeal to smaller audiences can be created and marketed to those smaller audiences.
Cinema is where the short-story of the video world now exists. While content distribution is easier, cinema is constrained by a finite number of theaters. Financing a motion picture is extremely conservative: if you don't have an established audience, you will have trouble getting funded. So now we see mostly adaptations, sequels, nostalgia-fests. I wouldn't say that a story has to have "stories that could be true" in order to be compelling and moving art. But the most compelling stories certainly tend to be set in the present with non-supernatural characters.
> handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
It seems like we're seeing a significant direct investment from content distributors directly into content production. I agree that it could be a bit of an oligopoly, but the fact that it's "easy" to make a content distribution enterprise (relative to how it was in 1910-2000) means that we have more entertainment choices now than ever before.
> Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
Except I don't want to pay for another service. I already pay for Netflix and Amazon and one of the reasons streaming was appealing is that it was different from cable. If we multiply streaming services, pretty soon I'm paying $5/month here and $10/month there and much of that for one thing I'd like to see on that service. I'd like to see production and distribution separated, though I recognize that's probably a pipe dream.
So only pay for Netflix and just accept that you won't get everything available. There is already too much content to watch.
Netflix and Amazon aren't magic. Sure there is some industry of scale by selling their wares internationally and some savings by letting ISPs distribute their content, but fundamentally TV hasn't become cheaper to make. If anything, Netflix and Amazon are spending more than average amounts of money on their new content. That results in beautiful shows, but it's not cheap. And those services don't use commercials, which means they'll be more expensive than cable content that does.
You can get production and distribution separated, by paying per episode on itunes or amazon. But that is more expensive for heavy users because they can't bake in an unlimited plan. You can use these services to get the handful of shows you really want to watch but aren't on netflix or amazon.
I suppose I meant that in response to "the establishment taking a beating". It's taking a beating, but leading to a new establishment that's much the same as the old one. Yes, I get a lot of content with Netflix, but since content is scattered and exclusive, I end up paying for much that I don't want across many services. Much like if I want to watch network "x" on cable, I also need to get network "y". To watch show "w", I need to get show "x" on network "y".
Of course, I can buy show by show, but since a single season of a show costs as much as several months of a subscription, that shows there's much to be gained in "bundling" for providers and I suppose we'll need to accept that (like I said, it's a pipe dream).
I think in a few years time this will all start to become more complicated. For a younger generation, the content is in independent products distributed on YouTube rather than professional productions on subscriptions networks. If the YouTube model becomes popular, TV will become cheaper to make and then costs shift to distribution.
I don't see how any of the things you mention have anything to do with fantasy per se. Gimmicky movies about flat characters with a predictable plot aren't exactly limited to a particular genre.
I don't want this. I just want them to make more good movies available. I don't like Netflix originals and I hate series type shows. I know everyone doesn't feel this way though.
Netflix was forced into this. For a while (I no longer look at the data) content costs were increasing at 8-10% per year which is unsustainable for distributors. The CEO of DISH once suggested on an earnings call that there should be anti trust inquiries into content pricing.
Additionally, Netflix's international growth was hampered by their inability to efficiently negotiate international distribution rights.
Right, this is the whole end game. They own the content so they can sell it forever to everyone and their library only grows. The Studios and traditional movie powers saw all the interest and decided to squeeze out as much juice as they can. I wouldn't be surprised to see Netflix and Amazon eventually start releasing their movies to the theaters directly and then they later add it exclusively to their streaming platform.
They are already releasing movies to cinemas. Just the exclusive part isn't happening which made cinemas unhappy. I think they mainly release to cinemas to qualify for the Oscars.
I don't know who handled distribution but Manchester by the Sea was an Amazon original production that was in theaters but will be part of Prime Free streaming in a few months.
I think you have that backwards.. Manchester by the Sea distribution rights were picked up by Amazon (for ~$10M at Sundance last year). I don't believe they were involved at all in the production.
TV networks were also retracting their content from Netflix when they started seeing that it could one day replace them. It's good that Netflix managed to get big enough to publish so many shows and soon movies, because otherwise it would've probably started to go downhill.
I'm by no means an expert on distribution tactics or arguing that I know more than Reed Hastings. I'm just stating if you're in that position you can get in trouble quick. To answer your question though, I would suggest making it so that the producers need you to do their distribution because you can do it far better than they could. Apple's app store might be a good example of this for the time being.
I think they smartly took advantage of Hollywood undervaluing the streaming market early on and built an entirely new market segment on the backs of their content. That wasn't sustainable. Hollywood realized (too late) that they created a monster and started shaking them down. Netflix's only real option was to produce their own content to avoid being under Hollywood's thumb.
I think Netflix made some mistakes on their journey (that whole "we're splitting our streaming/dvd business in two to help the consumer" messaging was particularly stupid) but their transition into original programming seems necessary to me, and it's paying off.
As a subscriber, I wish Netflix was as good as it was 5 years ago before Hollywood wised up, but given Hollywood did wise up not sure I can recommend a better strategy for Netflix than what they've been doing even with the benefit of hindsight (my only real criticism is they seem to focus on big prestige shows instead of cheap comfort TV like reality shows.)
Yeah that seems to be the way to go to me, i guess maybe they reached the same conclusion.
HBO is a premium product, you pay for it in addition to cable. Netflix is an all in one product, you pay for it to replace cable. Don't try to be HBO, be every cable tv station.
Is HBO still a premium product? We watch it through HBO GO/NOW or something like that without cable.
All this Netflix talk makes me wish I never ever tried to "play" the stock market with Netflix. I learned a very valuable lesson thanks to them & Amazon. It's called buy & hold on companies you use & love. Needless to say, overall I agree that they've ran their business extremely well. That whole dvd/stream announcement is hardly a distant memory. Also they deserve credit for listening to their customers & trying to fix that pretty immediately.
I like that Netflix invests to produce their own shows, but I feel like the end game of this is that Netflix becomes just another studio. I'd like a world where I can legally watch any movie for a small fee better than a world where I have to subscribe to ten different Internet-TV-Stations to get access to their respective content silo.
It's not going to be 'just another studio' unless the other studios start making their content easily accessible both:
a) online
b) internationally
Most people in the US have no idea how annoying it is to deal with content restrictions. It sucks to be an internet company in an industry stuck in a pre-internet licencing worldview.
It's not the distributors fault really. Netflix is not only in direct competition with it's suppliers, but it's actually killing them. Before netflix created its own content, it's shows were all created by cable channels, whose viewers it was taking at a fast rate.
Netflix made "rerun" content valuable. The suppliers were right to charge more.
If Netflix actually destroys cable, it would have had no suppliers at all. Creating their own content or buying it straight from production companies was always going to be the next step.
The self-pitying language from Hollywood is hilarious.
How DARE people want to work for Netflix intead of us, just because it pays better, is sexier and cooler, is technologically cutting edge, and allows much greater freedom from executive meddling?
I really hope they don't lose focus on the quality of their original content.
I understand that not everything Netflix does is tailored to me, particularly due to Netflix' growing, increasingly mainstream audience, diverse and varying preferences, more ground to cover, etc.
However lately Netflix' content simply seems to lack substance to me. It feels as if it's just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags/categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium. I'm not sure if classics like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men could have been created with such a formulaic approach and I'm missing shows of that caliber on Netflix.
Maybe the service should offer brillant content creators the freedom and opportunity to do the shows they want to do, instead of dictating the theme and framework.
House Of Cards was very, very promising in its early seasons. It almost felt like a future alltime favorite, but declined after Season 1.
Better Call Saul is shaping up very nicely and Fargo turned out to be better than I expected. Other than that there are many solid shows, and even more mediocre and lackluster ones I don't enjoy. However, that's not exactly my concern - I understand that only a subset of the content might appeal to me. The problem is that the part that does isn't on par with the very best the medium has to offer and I'm not sure if Netflix' current approach to content creation is a good approach to raise the quality.
Of course, you're right - in my country they are both Netflix-exclusives and it's easy to forget that it doesn't necessarily mean original content. Still, it emphasizes my point.
Do they brand them as "Netflix Originals" there? Netflix has an annoying tendency to do that in the US when they're merely the first or exclusive local distributor.
I find FX to be the best of the bunch for a while now, and I think it's precisely because they're like the non-ticking-boxes, less-formulaic weird little brother to the others: Atlanta, Fargo, Louie, Always Sunny, Better Things, and Legion.
And that's not even mentioning the 'classics': Justified, Terriers (underrated, must-watch!), The Shield, as well as the earlier season(s) of Sons of Anarchy and The Americans.
Not sure about the others, but Louis CK took a substantially smaller offer financially from FX as opposed to other networks because they were the only one that allowed him to do what he wanted with little interference, which certainly sounds like a positive thing for making original content.
I can name at least a few shows that are at least on par with the ones named:
House of Cards
Orange Is the New Black
Narcos
Stranger Things
The Crown
You're also naming one of a kind series most of whom are HBO produced. Sounds like you just like HBO, but even HBO doesn't put out shows like that every year.
That said, they have real numbers so there will be more of a bent for casual less involved shows that probably reach a wider audience. That said, I don't seem to have a problem finding high caliber shows, but I'm also a sucker for the Marvel shows, etc they've been producing and happy to watch those A&E shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
You're in the very small minority if you feel like House of Cards, Narcos, Stranger Things and The Crown are on par with The Sopranos and Mad Men. Orange is the New Black might have an argument to be put in the same atmosphere as those shows, but the others simply do not.
Uhm, actually, you are the minority here. OTNB is the 'worst' of all of those Netflix offerings, and House of Cards eclipses both Mad Men and The Sopranos easily, although I'll cede that the later seasons are not as strong.
Orange is the New Black is the one show that doesn't fit in with the rest for me. Consensus wise, it isn't any better than the other shows mentioned for Netflix. Again, consensus wise Sopranos and Mad Men are considered better but that they are rare shows.
Netflix is where great stuff goes to die. Compare the Netflix versions of Black Mirror and Sherlock Holmes with the ones put out by the BBC. The Netflix stuff just drags on-and-on to fit their format.
The Netflix version of Dirk Gently was substantially better than the BBC UK version even controlling for the difference in budget (however BBC America was involved).
It doesn't follow the books all that closely but does a delightful job of capturing the absurdity of Douglas Adams world in a way that translates well to the screen.
> Compare the Netflix versions of Black Mirror and Sherlock Holmes with the ones put out by the BBC
Black Mirror was never made by the BBC, and all episodes of Sherlock were made by the BBC not by Netflix, so neither of your examples make any sense and don't allow you to compare what you are saying they would.
I can't speak to Sherlock Holmes, but Season 3 of Black Mirror is extraordinary. Nosedive could have been edited down substantially, but so could White Christmas or Fifteen Million Merits from the seasons before. I don't agree at all that there was any Netflix degradation.
Abstract is triple-A. A Chef's Table is triple-A. Stranger Things is triple-A.
We all have a sort of cynical habit of presuming that things once were good, and now they aren't. But Netflix has always been a mix of good and bad original content, especially when viewed from the subjective eye that what some of us think is great others think is terrible. They're trying to serve all markets.
I've started watching The OA and it's the first series that I've noticed each episode is a different length. Some episodes are around 30 minutes, others are more than 60.
The OA did the whole "TV series as novel" thing very well. It was very disorienting for me (but in a good way) when the opening credits played almost 60 minutes into the first episode, with about 10 minutes to go.
Wait - what format? Netflix has no commercial-break rule or 3-act rule or pretty much any of the rigid broadcast TV rules. Individual episodes of some series may vary by half an hour in length.
But actual multiple episodes is a technical artefact of broadcast TV. If they wanted 'chapters' for Netflix productions they could do that without actually breaking them up into separate files on Netflix.
What's the difference between episodes and chapters? I mean to say, I think they're already what you want, just with different names. The seasons are the books, and the episodes are the chapters.
The only thing I can think of that's really different is opening/closing credits, but given that I pretty much never binge-watch anything (and apparently most of my friends on Facebook don't either), those serve a useful purpose for me, in that they help set the mood and make it so I don't have to wait a few weeks to figure out who played that street vendor that showed up one time in chapter^Wepisode 3.
Yes it was the repeated opening titles and credits I really meant.
That and the gentle recaps they often have built in. In the UK when we air US TV shows they often seem really weird because when there would be an advert break in the US parts of the story and sometimes even lines are repeated by the actors to help you get back into it. Sometimes you get a cliffhanger line, a sort of a second's pause, and then the cliffhanger line repeated in a different tone! Where we don't have advert breaks this comes across as bizarre until you think the US would put an advert there, and you get the same kind of thing but across episodes on Netflix.
I believe with Netflix (I almost never binge on Netflix, so this is sort of vague, sorry) doesn't it skip the opening credits if you continue on to the next? I know Amazon Prime Video does this, but that's only because I haven't figured out how to turn off autoplay for the next episode on that service.
> However lately Netflix' content simply seems to lack substance to me. It feels as if it's just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags/categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium.
That is very much the feeling I got from Stranger Things. It is solid in almost every way, but it also felt like it was written to maximize variables and checkboxes from a user survey. Add characters, references and stylistic choices to get the most 80's nostalgic feeling in the viewer as possible.
I felt that way too, until the ending. Every netflix show ends the same way. It was one checkmark too much. I really hope they start being a little more surprising.
I generally enjoyed Iron Fist, but I definitely felt it was slower paced than any of the other Netflix Marvel series. It really felt like they were staging things for the Defenders (whenever that ends up coming out, although I hope this year).
They almost certainly do optimise that way, and it's likely the easiest optimizations to do due to their somewhat superficial nature.
However, a data driven mindset should be applicable on deeper levels also, but that probably takes longer to become possible to analyse, and crucially, I belive that it is likely to need a baseline of stylistically optimized content before the value of more abstract concepts can be discerned from the data.
An unfortunate effect of data driven is also that unless you also chase some crazy (possible) trends in the data, you will regress to content with maximal earnings in the short to medium term.
Data doesn't carry visions, at least not by themselves!
Can we at least agree that they are seeking to "maximize variables and checkboxes" much less now than in the past?
They started with Game of Cards and Orange is the New Black which are the strongest examples in history of creating content based on what data tells you people want, because those were their first few series and they couldn't afford to have them flop.
Nowadays, they make such a wide range of shows, they can afford to sometimes just take a risk on giving talented people money and hoping they make a great show that finds an audience.
One series I've enjoyed recently is The OA which is definitely not a box-ticking exercise of a series - the complete opposite. I'm happy it's been renewed for a second season, but I can't imagine it's driving any revenue directly.
I was also somewhat irritated by that. I still enjoyed the rest, though. The whole dancing thing just made me realize for the first time that the show won't keep all it's promises (for instance, the scene when OA bites the dog and it becomes "tame" had a lot of mystery surrounding it - but that's never resolved. And can never properly be explained by dancing ;-) ).
This sentiment seems fairly common in various comment threads I've seen. The dancing aspect seems to evoke in some people... discomfort or something hard to pin down, and I wonder why. At the end of the day, electricity is still electricity whether it's being delivered through power lines or pulsed through fiber optics or pulled and stored in someone as static electricity as they dance. Most science fiction dealing with time travel or teleportation seems to rely on a machine or a suit or a phone booth or some mysterious futuristic means of energy. Yet tribal dancing is one of the oldest human traditions of energy expenditure, done ritualistically. It doesn't seem entirely outlandish to me that a certain configuration of certain energy expenditures by humans could create some sort of ripple or warp or whatever in time space.
I think part of the problem is that it signified a shift in genre for a lot of people. You start out with a mad scientist who is doing experiments trying to understand death and the story of the girl who escaped his grasps. The dancing scene transitioned the show to be about someone who can heal people with hand gestures. I enjoyed the twists, but I can certainly imagine someone viewing it as going from (somewhat) hard sci-fi to being about magic and that change turning them off the show. The fact that the actual dancing look ridiculous also probably didn't help.
I find a lot of shows are trying to check both the "belief in belief" box and the "sciency" box at the same time, and it does a disservice to both. The OA on Netflix and The Oasis on Amazon are just two examples.
But the show doesn't give the viewer any solid evidence that the dancing did anything really. We have to trust the characters, and they could be unreliable narrators. The main characters in the show could be schizophrenic.
It's like a homeless man being in a cardboard box and duct tape suit screaming about his mech suit. You just feel bad for him.
It felt like a cheap attempt at being mysterious or deep. If you look at the people behind the show, it's seems like this is part for the course with their work.
The OA is amazing and beautiful. I loved the incorporation of primal & tribal dancing -- it's been a huge driver of healing from trauma since the dawn of man.
The OA isn't for everyone. I loved it and thought the first season was thrilling. It reminds me of the leftovers, not because of any common tone or theme, but because it's a show people either love or really don't like.
If you want to see slow paced, Sense8 takes the biscuit. I count about 10 minutes of actual plot over the entire season, primarily concentrated in the first and last episodes. It's obviously meant to be a character-driven story, but each of the characters is a two-dimensional stereotype.
How much of a say does Netflix has on the production of the shows? I thought one of the advantage of Netflix was that they don't interfere with the production of the shows and they let the creative people make the decisions.
:) I tried to watch stranger things twice and couldn't have finished it as it feels like very stupid show that tries to play on 80x nostalgia. Master of none I watched twice and think that it's the masterpiece.
Master of None didn't do it for me, but I loved Stranger Things.
This is a great example of how Netflix's model works well for "long tail" content. They can produce and keep shows around that have a different or smaller audience than traditional networks can.
The difference of opinion in this small sample is good. As long as a show has some people who love it, that's a good thing. Content made for the widest audience possible is usually bland and predictable... just look at pop music in the last few decades. Network TV is just as bad because if a show isn't a hit in 2 or 3 episodes they pull it. If they'd done that in era of "classic TV" (60s - 80s), half the most famous ever wouldn't have made it.
I really liked Stranger Things and Master of None. Didn't like Daredevil or Luke Cage, which are two of their better reviewed shows.
This is one of the reasons why I appreciate Netflix. Instead of a bunch of shows that everyone considers average, it's taken some risks and created shows that some people consider great and others dislike. I'll take that over a bunch of lukewarm shows anytime.
There's nothing wrong with that. If "Stranger Things" were nothing more than an exercise in 80s nostalgia, then I would agree with you, but I found the story and characters compelling. The production values of the show really enhanced it, but they didn't make it. The story, characters, actors, etc., make it good show.
TV and cable puts out a lot of shows, so their top 5% is going to be better than netflixes average. But, IMO Netflix's average is fairly decent. It can also take a while for a show to hit it's groove. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard
I believe that is literally how they made House of Cards - the original BBC show was relatively popular with people who also liked Kevin Spacey and work by David Fincher:
I can't argue against that kind of logic but also agree that it leaves Netflix offerings quite flat. The Crown is also a very good show, but you can almost feel the cross-section of Downton Abbey and The Kings Speech as you watch. I don't think you'd see the algorithm come up with a show like Transparent, for example.
IMO it's gotten worse with all this Marvel stuff. Maybe that's because I see it promoted more than other shows, but having tried a few they're pretty uninspired (and, for crossover purposes, all appear to share the same setting and overall feel). I know it isn't the case, but it feels like the algorithm has reached some sort of recursion loop: our viewers like gritty crime dramas starring superheroes, set in New York. So they'll love this new gritty crime drama starring a superhero, set in New York.
It's ironic then that I regard House Of Cards' early seasons, particularly Season 1, as Netflix' best content to date. To me it felt as if they really aimed for a masterpiece.
These days they seem to be fine with catering to popular categories, which might very well be the better approach when it comes to subscriber growth, but average to solid content straight from the Marvel template.
I'm with you on the Marvel side, even more because they really push the formulaic cross-referencing of characters/situations.
I can remember one line in "Luke Cage" from Barnett saying "I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen", sounds very cheesy in that context and kinda broke the suspension of disbelief when watching, even though I think that "Luke Cage" is one of the best Marvel series on Netflix right now.
except that hardly any of it portrays Hell's Kitchen NYC. The bar Luke owns, is actually in Alphabet City, NYC. Though I get that saying "I'm going back to ABC" doesn't have the same tone.
Oh, I know. And I'm sure they're right. But as someone who has largely given up on the Marvel movies because they're too much effort for too little payoff, I'm dreading the day I can no longer understand Jessica Jones fully without also watching three ancillary shows and one unified ensamble show beforehand.
> I'm dreading the day I can no longer understand Jessica Jones fully without also watching three ancillary shows and one unified ensamble show beforehand.
Heh this! When I started watching Agents of Shield, whether intended or not, I found the first season somewhat hard to penetrate. I ended up having to hit up Wikipedia, get my head around the Marvel Universe timeline and then watch relevant movies so I could slot in where AoS picks up its part of the Marvel Universe story.
I'm pretty sure all this is a dream come true for Marvel fans, but you can get too much of a good thing, and I now have Marvel-fatigue.
> It feels as if it's just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags/categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium
By definition "masterpieces" are very rare things. They're decidedly not assembly line material. I think Netflix and Amazon have done well against far more established media outlets.
That said, if you really want "wall-to-wall" masterpieces, there's a streaming service for that: filmstruck (https://www.filmstruck.com/). It has the entire magnificent criterion collection. The thing is, however, you have to think of it more as a library rather than an outlet for the newest stuff.
> However lately Netflix' content simply seems to lack substance to me.
I want to echo this as well. One thing about American TV content is that the story plot is very repetitive in nature. Netflix and other similar providers' original contents are very much either a superhero or a crime chaser plot. Furthermore I also dislike breaking content into seasons. It keeps audience around so more money but I am just very inpatient when it comes to TV content. In China / Hong Kong, most drama do not release in parts. So say there are 40 episodes it will have 40 episodes completed when the drama is aired. When you drag your drama plot beyond season 3 the story gets boring. Walking Dead, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Blacklist, dragging on.
I want some more refreshing content. This is why I love cartoon contents like Bob's Burger or watching documentary. I get some breathing room.
Also I find as much the complex plot in different shows, the politics or beliefs of protagonists remain incredibly uniform and simplistic to the cartoonish level.
I'm at the point where I feel like I can't start watching any new show because I will be able to predict everything that happens before it happens, making the whole thing feel like a waste of time. The storytelling is boring and the foreshadowing is more like foreshouting due to how obvious they make it.
Case in point, I never read the books and I put off watching Game of Thrones for a very long time until my brother finally convinced me to give it a shot a few months ago. When he came to me asking about how shocked I was about what happened at the end of the first season I literally laughed in his face because it was telegraphed from episode 1.
Part of the problem is that they are combining US and British (bbc) tv production schemes. The US focuses on market data, the box ticking. But this requires ongoing feedback during production. That's why US pilots are so different than the eventual series. The bbc selects a show for production run without data or pilots. They rely on expert opinion to greenlight a far shorter initial run. If a show is a miss it disappears after six episodes. Netflix is doing both, resulting in shows that lack market feedback during a long season (iron fist) yet also seem to be boxticking (stranger things). This is a tricky path and while sometimes it works (stranger things) often it doesnt (ASOUE).
I quite like that Netflix isn't focusing on mega hit prestige shows like those you mention, but rather seem to focus quirky niche shows like Dirk Gently, A Very Secret Service and The Expanse that aren't to most peoples taste.
True, but their willingness to seek out and plaster their names all over these shows (and no doubt pay for the privilege) is a good indication that it is the sort of thing they seem to be into.
The Expanse is great but it's made by [EDIT, thanks 'winthrowe:] some other studio. Syfy were right to buy it because it is so much better than anything Syfy have ever created... whatever was done right here, they should try to do some of it.
my concern is letting the normally diverse catalog dwindle in favor of more original content. They did seem to go a bit overboard for me in the superhero stuff but I can live with it and some was interesting.
I just don't want keep not finding shows I expect or have seen before. I like older TV series and cannot see the costs in getting even stuff from further back. Is there no market or is there a service I need to look at?
Sure, but these shows are still produced and written by the same industry insiders that made the Wire and the sopranos. The ideas may be more data informed, but good art is still good art because it's produced by great artists. Counterpoint is there's plenty of episodic crap on broadcast TV with lots of cancellations. Netflix seems to have a much better track record.
I hear you. How ever how long netflix have been producing content ? Which content producer can be said to regularly produce exceptional content ? I would say none. It's usually a blip on a consistent and durable production of good content on the long run.
And a matter of taste too. I consider SG1 and Buffy my top 10 while a lot of people would just find them "meh".
We need also to consider that netflix content has one quality: it's refreshing. The OA, Luke Cage, 3% all had personal taste.
I'd settle for fewer shows with earlier release dates. It's crazy waiting over a year to watch the next season of a show.
I guess I'm a dinosaur from the olden days of TV where once per week you watched a show. Then a break for summer and the new season started in the fall.
These days it's binge watch an entire show and wait 18 months for the next season. I can't stand that who can sit still for that long?
I bet Netflix would prefer a slower production and release schedule rather than a blast of a dozen episodes. Even the actors must hate that they must also have to wait until production starts again.
Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast. On Iron Fist I noticed in each episode a red laser dot and grid shining on the actors. And in one episode you could see water dripping off the camera lens housing.
The way they released "Designated Survivor" was similar to "old school" TV shows. With one episode per week being released. So I guess they are testing with that model
Netflix has distribution rights for it in many countries. Outside the US, with shows like this, they release it one episode at a time with some delay (days to weeks) from the initial US broadcast date.
A lot of stories seem to be written taking into account that kind of passage of time... Game of Thrones and Harry Potter is literally and figuratively the story of the characters growing up. Love on the other hand, is set immediately after season 1.
Also, shows that run on a long or continuous schedule don't allow for the kind of care and polish - if you're churning out an episode a week, you can only do sitcom type stuff. No visual effects, no story arcs (too many actors come and go), no locations (can't spend all year outdoors). Doing seasons allows the team to get together, shoot for a few months and wrap, like a 10 hour movie.
I think actors prefer few months of intense work per project a year, so they can do other stuff as well. If it's 3 to 5 days a week all year you're locked in too much.
> I can't stand that who can sit still for that long?
You could... space things out yourself, you know? :)
> Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast.
Debatable. There's always been bad TV series. And production quality actually seems to be going up. Game of Thrones, Westworld, House of Cards are some of the most expensive and high quality TV shows ever produced, being not that off from Holywood blockbusters in terms of actors, special effects, sets, etc.
I noticed the red laser dot as well through the whole show in Iron Fist. What are your overall thoughts? It was the first Netflix Marvel show that wasn't a 5/5 in my book.
I would suggest changing the link to one of these, as neither the original link nor the Google trick seems to work for me (also, the title change voids the usefulness of the 'web' link).
I find it hard to believe that NetFlix should be worth $60b on $8b of revenue when Time-Warner (which owns HBO) has a $75B market cap in $25b of revenue. NetFlix had higher EPS in 2014 so scale is not a great argument here.
Expanse isn't on netflix in the US, at all. It's on Amazon Prime in the US, on a 1 season delay, or $3 per episode (only season 1 is available for free).
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] thread(1) https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/business/netflix-profi...
It seems in the end, we're really returning to the cable era.
Be ready for packages giving you access to Netflix, Amazon, and channels...
So the situation isn't quite the same.
As an observer, what still seems odd to me is the low number of shows or movies they are producing with that massive budget - last year "The Get Down" apparently cost $16 million per episode while the entire, huge hit, first season of "Stranger Things" cost $13 million.
I would have thought that would inspire them to look for more of these low budget, low risk, big payoff shows, especially when you run a subscription service - surely a series that people binge over 2 weeks, with the potential for more seasons to keep people subscribing is better for you than a one time film? Nope, $100 Million on a single film this year.
That on top of the fact they can use data to minimise the risk must mean it's a realistic option.
You think that's crazy? They paid Dave Chappelle $60 million for _3 standup specials_.
Maybe they are planning to release the film in movie theaters later? License it to other subscription services a month or two after they release it on their platform?
I believe the next step is having "blockbusters" feature movies, with top notch CGI, a-level actors, maybe some Oscar contenders.
My impression is that low risk, big payoff shows would be optimizing for a local maxima. Big bets like the Will Smith movie might take them to a new maxima. And Netflix is basically a success history about reaching a new maxima one after another since its beginning.
That is probably too expensive unless they release to theaters first.
What they could do is create the missing midrange movie that Hollywood just doesn't make anymore. Hollywood makes huge expensive movies and indie studios make cheap movies. Netflix could make the 40 million dollar style of movie that nobody makes anymore.
In fact, they sort of are, they just do it in a longer form.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1887901/?ref_=nv_sr_1
So I think you still have to go the more traditional route of knowing someone within the Netflix development department that you can pitch your project to. Or your agent/manager/producer will need to have that connection to get you in the door. I've been stuck in indie film limbo trying to finish this film because it has a lot of complicated visual effects (which are close to being finished) so I currently don't have a manager or agent who can help to get me in the door at Netflix.
Remember that if all salesmen had the ethics of developers.... well the world would actually be a much better place but if some do and some don't then those that don't are not seen. Something like that... its just the old cold calling salesman within me looking for ins :).
Generally I would not recommend such behaviour but in regards to cliques and arbitrary walls where meritocracy is unwelcome I would recommend skulduggery.
I noticed that you were getting downvoted and I am curious why.
Is it because people don't like what they think is the dishonesty of the idea?
Or because they don't think it will work?
Or?
I think it's a fine idea.
I have done similar things (not in pitching netflix) and it has worked. It's amazing how quick people are to criticize something that is foreign to how they operate or think idealistically the world should operate.
From what I've come across, Netflix solicits what it wants, it doesn't really "take pitches" as the business has run via Agents/Studios in the past. Rather, if some of the comments here are hitting accurately, Netflix has an idea for their show and then assembles the team to execute. That's quite a bit of a different relationship than Work-For-Hire type studio productions I think. Thus, it's another way they kind of alienate themselves from the industry, in that they are a "Don't call us, we'll call you" company.
He didn't give specifics (as usual), but it makes me happy.
I guess both Amazon and Netflix try to capture precisely that role, in that case they could charge almost whatever they want while they are not forced by competition to have high quality (and therefore expensive) content. Plus I am afraid that the market tends to produce a monopoly, because a individual subscriber will look for the service that has more content.
[1] Hetzner currently charges EUR 1.40 / TB of additional traffic, so marginal distribution costs are in the range of EUR 10^-3 / Movie.
you can't just use the traffic cost. also if they would on hetzner, their network would be so bad that nobody could've watch netflix. (not that the hetzner network is bad, but it wouldn't withstand the amount of traffic from netflix (especially inter-region traffic is not as cheap as it could be, and also they need to talk with amazon/google about their traffic ("public pricing" is 0,01 USD per GB)))
also there are other things that needs to be paid, servers, developers and other staff and stuff.
it's not just that you write 20 lines of code and put it on hetzner and can scale globally.
Also, in Netflix's case, they have a box containing terabytes of their most popular content sitting in almost every datacenter and peering with all major ISPs and backbone providers sharing the cross connect: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
Meanwhile, I've enjoyed a number of "low-budget" shows they've had (like ice pilots) and a number of the kung-fu movies they have available. But to be fair, a LOT of the low-budget stuff they have is trash too.
It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content, to seem like they have a fuller collection, even if it's only a collection a raccoon would love. This, taken with the idea they tote of "having only the best performing people" displays a mismatch in cultural ideas and actual output.
For me, I want netflix to succeed because another content producer is a welcome addition to the scene, and i hope they stay independent and don't get bought up by disney. I know in a few years they'll have a collection of original content to rival the older players.
> It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content
OR, they're just targeting demographics that don't include you. "I don't enjoy [thing] therefore it's padding" seems like kind of an ego-centric worldview to me.
Haven't they even talked about how not having a fixed number of viewing hours means they can more easily target niche audiences?
They know exactly what they're doing and every comment on this article in HN right now shows you that.
One person says they hate something and it's crap and the next person tells them that they're wrong. Entertainment is subjective netflix has numbers to back up their spends.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/the-20-highest...
Its at the point where if you meet someone and you're a fan of a non-top tier TV show, unless you met in an echo chamber, the odds of someone being your astrological symbol or in some cases having the same birthday are higher than them being a fan of your pet show.
TV is no longer culturally relevant, not like it was decades ago. Nobody watches that stuff.
The fact that they're pretty much the only ones (with the exception of Amazon Prime lately which is shooting themselves in the food for not providing apps for Android TV and other platforms) that are open to world-wide audiences, they're in for a huge success.
Meanwhile, HBO and others still rather show "Not available in your country" than collect 10EUR/month from several TENS of millions of subscribers outside US.
Also we have Amazon Prime but rarely use it for the videos. It's a pain to watch except on our one tv with a computer hooked up to it. It's also the only video app we have that we can't stream to Chromecast. Is that $20 device really worth losing viewers over?
Netflix (and amazon) are in a powerful position to analyze and understand what people really want in a way that cable and networks (remember those) simply can't match.
Providing "hits" to relatively small demographics over and over again, I think, might make more business sense than going up against the more experienced competition for mass-appeal.
"Stranger Things" is a good example, it was a pitch-perfect, nuanced thriller series. I dare say it was an 80's period piece. That's niche. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but damn it was cool.
By appealing to the long tail, Netflix can make smaller demographics VERY HAPPY with their product, one demographic at a time. This is perhaps better than trying to please everyone at once with a blockbuster hit.
If there's not as much big margin, but conversely lacking a major bleed out of funds by failure, it's a much more even, perhaps sustainable model as tastes change in entertainment (or by expanding into other regions).
Very interesting point, nicely noted your way.
Granted maybe you get farther than season 1 (Game of Thrones up to season 3 for me, for example) but TV very much fits with "die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."
Erm.... House of Cards (on Netflix) is an American remake of the British show of the same name that was shown on the BBC in 1990? Not exactly "original content"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)
That being said I do feel the US version has very much overstayed its welcome.
Rounding up to $10 a person subscription, Netflix can comfortably spend a million dollars on a show even if it thinks only 100,000 people, and no one else ever, are going to enjoy it. When they have almost a 100 million subscribers, they can basically make 1000 shows, each of which will be thought of as "great" by 0.1 million people and "trash" by 99.9 million people.
I used to think reality TV was padding too. Maybe these kinds of shows just are not meant for us?
That's true, and the bad is stuff is unusually bad, but at the same time my monthly fee stays the same. Meanwhile, at a movie theater a bad movie costs me and my wife about $100 with babysitting, parking, and modest concessions like a soda and a box of raisenettes. Netflix-style services simply are more forgiving because of the small monthly flat-fee. Bad content is easy to skip and you're not being punished financially as long as good stuff is still being created to offset the bad.
I won't fault a 25% fail rate. Hollywood as a whole, or even if we look at individual well-funded studios, must be shooting at an 75% fail rate here.
I am under no illusions about how netflix might behave if they ever achieve a monolithic dominance but so far it's great.
The other thing that differentiates it from traditional cable is the experience. Because of a package deal, I also have cable for the next year, and it is bombed out and depleted. Not just in terms of content, but in terms of when that content is on and the very UX of the interface. The amount of lag changing channels on a modern digital receiver from a major cable company would get you fired as a web developer if your website lagged the same. It is truly remarkable.
Netflix still has a huge advantage though, in that they are available internationally while HBO Now is only available in a handful of countries.
That's roughly 3/4 of what the three cinema chains in my city show. That leaves some 25 percent to the remotely realistic movies - the ones with characters and stories that could be true, at least in a distant future. There are nights where the only movies the cinemas show, are fantastic ones. Where the only cinema experience would involve wearing 3D glasses and watching childish characters save the world.
Personally, I am fine with the establishment taking some beating. But I sure hope there will be more than just a handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
As a result, what we've called "television" is now a place where long-form dramatic stories can unfold. Since it's more affordable to produce, content which can appeal to smaller audiences can be created and marketed to those smaller audiences.
Cinema is where the short-story of the video world now exists. While content distribution is easier, cinema is constrained by a finite number of theaters. Financing a motion picture is extremely conservative: if you don't have an established audience, you will have trouble getting funded. So now we see mostly adaptations, sequels, nostalgia-fests. I wouldn't say that a story has to have "stories that could be true" in order to be compelling and moving art. But the most compelling stories certainly tend to be set in the present with non-supernatural characters.
> handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
It seems like we're seeing a significant direct investment from content distributors directly into content production. I agree that it could be a bit of an oligopoly, but the fact that it's "easy" to make a content distribution enterprise (relative to how it was in 1910-2000) means that we have more entertainment choices now than ever before.
Except I don't want to pay for another service. I already pay for Netflix and Amazon and one of the reasons streaming was appealing is that it was different from cable. If we multiply streaming services, pretty soon I'm paying $5/month here and $10/month there and much of that for one thing I'd like to see on that service. I'd like to see production and distribution separated, though I recognize that's probably a pipe dream.
2. You can just buy the show in most cases if a sub does not suit you.
3. The nickle and diming is real. I still do not spend as much, but its getting close. I feel the quality (compared preimum cable) is higher however.
Netflix and Amazon aren't magic. Sure there is some industry of scale by selling their wares internationally and some savings by letting ISPs distribute their content, but fundamentally TV hasn't become cheaper to make. If anything, Netflix and Amazon are spending more than average amounts of money on their new content. That results in beautiful shows, but it's not cheap. And those services don't use commercials, which means they'll be more expensive than cable content that does.
You can get production and distribution separated, by paying per episode on itunes or amazon. But that is more expensive for heavy users because they can't bake in an unlimited plan. You can use these services to get the handful of shows you really want to watch but aren't on netflix or amazon.
Of course, I can buy show by show, but since a single season of a show costs as much as several months of a subscription, that shows there's much to be gained in "bundling" for providers and I suppose we'll need to accept that (like I said, it's a pipe dream).
I think in a few years time this will all start to become more complicated. For a younger generation, the content is in independent products distributed on YouTube rather than professional productions on subscriptions networks. If the YouTube model becomes popular, TV will become cheaper to make and then costs shift to distribution.
Additionally, Netflix's international growth was hampered by their inability to efficiently negotiate international distribution rights.
Seems the Drafthouse offers this deal.
I think Netflix made some mistakes on their journey (that whole "we're splitting our streaming/dvd business in two to help the consumer" messaging was particularly stupid) but their transition into original programming seems necessary to me, and it's paying off.
As a subscriber, I wish Netflix was as good as it was 5 years ago before Hollywood wised up, but given Hollywood did wise up not sure I can recommend a better strategy for Netflix than what they've been doing even with the benefit of hindsight (my only real criticism is they seem to focus on big prestige shows instead of cheap comfort TV like reality shows.)
Some of their "unscripted" content is already out: Terrace House, Ultimate Beastmaster, etc.
HBO is a premium product, you pay for it in addition to cable. Netflix is an all in one product, you pay for it to replace cable. Don't try to be HBO, be every cable tv station.
All this Netflix talk makes me wish I never ever tried to "play" the stock market with Netflix. I learned a very valuable lesson thanks to them & Amazon. It's called buy & hold on companies you use & love. Needless to say, overall I agree that they've ran their business extremely well. That whole dvd/stream announcement is hardly a distant memory. Also they deserve credit for listening to their customers & trying to fix that pretty immediately.
a) online
b) internationally
Most people in the US have no idea how annoying it is to deal with content restrictions. It sucks to be an internet company in an industry stuck in a pre-internet licencing worldview.
Netflix made "rerun" content valuable. The suppliers were right to charge more.
If Netflix actually destroys cable, it would have had no suppliers at all. Creating their own content or buying it straight from production companies was always going to be the next step.
How DARE people want to work for Netflix intead of us, just because it pays better, is sexier and cooler, is technologically cutting edge, and allows much greater freedom from executive meddling?
NOT COOL GUYS.
"You just can’t compete with someone coming in with fresh money, low overhead and a lot less baggage than you"
Might as well just give up then right?
I understand that not everything Netflix does is tailored to me, particularly due to Netflix' growing, increasingly mainstream audience, diverse and varying preferences, more ground to cover, etc.
However lately Netflix' content simply seems to lack substance to me. It feels as if it's just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags/categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium. I'm not sure if classics like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men could have been created with such a formulaic approach and I'm missing shows of that caliber on Netflix. Maybe the service should offer brillant content creators the freedom and opportunity to do the shows they want to do, instead of dictating the theme and framework.
And that's not even mentioning the 'classics': Justified, Terriers (underrated, must-watch!), The Shield, as well as the earlier season(s) of Sons of Anarchy and The Americans.
You're also naming one of a kind series most of whom are HBO produced. Sounds like you just like HBO, but even HBO doesn't put out shows like that every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...
That said, they have real numbers so there will be more of a bent for casual less involved shows that probably reach a wider audience. That said, I don't seem to have a problem finding high caliber shows, but I'm also a sucker for the Marvel shows, etc they've been producing and happy to watch those A&E shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Black Mirror was never made by the BBC, and all episodes of Sherlock were made by the BBC not by Netflix, so neither of your examples make any sense and don't allow you to compare what you are saying they would.
Abstract is triple-A. A Chef's Table is triple-A. Stranger Things is triple-A.
We all have a sort of cynical habit of presuming that things once were good, and now they aren't. But Netflix has always been a mix of good and bad original content, especially when viewed from the subjective eye that what some of us think is great others think is terrible. They're trying to serve all markets.
I've started watching The OA and it's the first series that I've noticed each episode is a different length. Some episodes are around 30 minutes, others are more than 60.
The only thing I can think of that's really different is opening/closing credits, but given that I pretty much never binge-watch anything (and apparently most of my friends on Facebook don't either), those serve a useful purpose for me, in that they help set the mood and make it so I don't have to wait a few weeks to figure out who played that street vendor that showed up one time in chapter^Wepisode 3.
That and the gentle recaps they often have built in. In the UK when we air US TV shows they often seem really weird because when there would be an advert break in the US parts of the story and sometimes even lines are repeated by the actors to help you get back into it. Sometimes you get a cliffhanger line, a sort of a second's pause, and then the cliffhanger line repeated in a different tone! Where we don't have advert breaks this comes across as bizarre until you think the US would put an advert there, and you get the same kind of thing but across episodes on Netflix.
(Mind you I have a low tolerance for TV drama; the last two things I really enjoyed were Foyle's War and Endeavour)
That is very much the feeling I got from Stranger Things. It is solid in almost every way, but it also felt like it was written to maximize variables and checkboxes from a user survey. Add characters, references and stylistic choices to get the most 80's nostalgic feeling in the viewer as possible.
However, a data driven mindset should be applicable on deeper levels also, but that probably takes longer to become possible to analyse, and crucially, I belive that it is likely to need a baseline of stylistically optimized content before the value of more abstract concepts can be discerned from the data.
An unfortunate effect of data driven is also that unless you also chase some crazy (possible) trends in the data, you will regress to content with maximal earnings in the short to medium term.
Data doesn't carry visions, at least not by themselves!
They started with Game of Cards and Orange is the New Black which are the strongest examples in history of creating content based on what data tells you people want, because those were their first few series and they couldn't afford to have them flop.
Nowadays, they make such a wide range of shows, they can afford to sometimes just take a risk on giving talented people money and hoping they make a great show that finds an audience.
One series I've enjoyed recently is The OA which is definitely not a box-ticking exercise of a series - the complete opposite. I'm happy it's been renewed for a second season, but I can't imagine it's driving any revenue directly.
It's like a homeless man being in a cardboard box and duct tape suit screaming about his mech suit. You just feel bad for him.
It felt like a cheap attempt at being mysterious or deep. If you look at the people behind the show, it's seems like this is part for the course with their work.
This is a great example of how Netflix's model works well for "long tail" content. They can produce and keep shows around that have a different or smaller audience than traditional networks can.
This is one of the reasons why I appreciate Netflix. Instead of a bunch of shows that everyone considers average, it's taken some risks and created shows that some people consider great and others dislike. I'll take that over a bunch of lukewarm shows anytime.
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/20/data-inspires-crea...
I can't argue against that kind of logic but also agree that it leaves Netflix offerings quite flat. The Crown is also a very good show, but you can almost feel the cross-section of Downton Abbey and The Kings Speech as you watch. I don't think you'd see the algorithm come up with a show like Transparent, for example.
IMO it's gotten worse with all this Marvel stuff. Maybe that's because I see it promoted more than other shows, but having tried a few they're pretty uninspired (and, for crossover purposes, all appear to share the same setting and overall feel). I know it isn't the case, but it feels like the algorithm has reached some sort of recursion loop: our viewers like gritty crime dramas starring superheroes, set in New York. So they'll love this new gritty crime drama starring a superhero, set in New York.
I can remember one line in "Luke Cage" from Barnett saying "I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen", sounds very cheesy in that context and kinda broke the suspension of disbelief when watching, even though I think that "Luke Cage" is one of the best Marvel series on Netflix right now.
(many of the Netflix actors have contract clauses for appearances in movies)
Heh this! When I started watching Agents of Shield, whether intended or not, I found the first season somewhat hard to penetrate. I ended up having to hit up Wikipedia, get my head around the Marvel Universe timeline and then watch relevant movies so I could slot in where AoS picks up its part of the Marvel Universe story.
I'm pretty sure all this is a dream come true for Marvel fans, but you can get too much of a good thing, and I now have Marvel-fatigue.
By definition "masterpieces" are very rare things. They're decidedly not assembly line material. I think Netflix and Amazon have done well against far more established media outlets.
That said, if you really want "wall-to-wall" masterpieces, there's a streaming service for that: filmstruck (https://www.filmstruck.com/). It has the entire magnificent criterion collection. The thing is, however, you have to think of it more as a library rather than an outlet for the newest stuff.
I want to echo this as well. One thing about American TV content is that the story plot is very repetitive in nature. Netflix and other similar providers' original contents are very much either a superhero or a crime chaser plot. Furthermore I also dislike breaking content into seasons. It keeps audience around so more money but I am just very inpatient when it comes to TV content. In China / Hong Kong, most drama do not release in parts. So say there are 40 episodes it will have 40 episodes completed when the drama is aired. When you drag your drama plot beyond season 3 the story gets boring. Walking Dead, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Blacklist, dragging on.
I want some more refreshing content. This is why I love cartoon contents like Bob's Burger or watching documentary. I get some breathing room.
Case in point, I never read the books and I put off watching Game of Thrones for a very long time until my brother finally convinced me to give it a shot a few months ago. When he came to me asking about how shocked I was about what happened at the end of the first season I literally laughed in his face because it was telegraphed from episode 1.
I quite like that Netflix isn't focusing on mega hit prestige shows like those you mention, but rather seem to focus quirky niche shows like Dirk Gently, A Very Secret Service and The Expanse that aren't to most peoples taste.
I just don't want keep not finding shows I expect or have seen before. I like older TV series and cannot see the costs in getting even stuff from further back. Is there no market or is there a service I need to look at?
The third season of Black Mirror is pretty much the only content that I'll rewatch over and and over like I would, say, The Wire.
But if I want to veg out and watch something "pretty good" stuff like Master of None and Love are decent.
And a matter of taste too. I consider SG1 and Buffy my top 10 while a lot of people would just find them "meh".
We need also to consider that netflix content has one quality: it's refreshing. The OA, Luke Cage, 3% all had personal taste.
I guess I'm a dinosaur from the olden days of TV where once per week you watched a show. Then a break for summer and the new season started in the fall.
These days it's binge watch an entire show and wait 18 months for the next season. I can't stand that who can sit still for that long?
I bet Netflix would prefer a slower production and release schedule rather than a blast of a dozen episodes. Even the actors must hate that they must also have to wait until production starts again.
Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast. On Iron Fist I noticed in each episode a red laser dot and grid shining on the actors. And in one episode you could see water dripping off the camera lens housing.
Also, shows that run on a long or continuous schedule don't allow for the kind of care and polish - if you're churning out an episode a week, you can only do sitcom type stuff. No visual effects, no story arcs (too many actors come and go), no locations (can't spend all year outdoors). Doing seasons allows the team to get together, shoot for a few months and wrap, like a 10 hour movie.
I think actors prefer few months of intense work per project a year, so they can do other stuff as well. If it's 3 to 5 days a week all year you're locked in too much.
You could... space things out yourself, you know? :)
> Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast.
Debatable. There's always been bad TV series. And production quality actually seems to be going up. Game of Thrones, Westworld, House of Cards are some of the most expensive and high quality TV shows ever produced, being not that off from Holywood blockbusters in terms of actors, special effects, sets, etc.
https://www.google.com/amp/wap.business-standard.com/article...
and non-AMP versions
http://wap.business-standard.com/article/international/netfl...
Bosch over on Amazon was pretty good.
I don't understand why the Expanse series two is being held back from Europe. Is it already available on Netflix in the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)