I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
I think Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed.
With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:
- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.
- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.
- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.
Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.
I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:
- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time
- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do
- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.
So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.
I’d note they’re not mutually exclusive revenue streams and both add meaningfully to their value. I think the reality is they peaked the first one and growth is in the second one. Subscriptions that are sticky however are much more valuable individually than an advertising tier user. But if you can cater to both and not downgrade subscriptions to ads tier you win in two parallel markets via the same platform. This is not a bad business strategy. But they need to not lose the subscriptions and their reason for being in the quest for growth or they’ll see nominal growth with decline in value.
note: I hate ads so I'm not trying to manifest this, but can you explain why you're so sure of this?
To me, it seems like they "should" (for greed reasons, I mean, not for my happiness) hike the prices of subscriptions aggressively while keeping the ad-tier attractively-priced, moving as many people as possible over. This increases ad revenue and allows more YoY growth if their ML can manipulate you into more watch hours in 2027 than you do in 2026.
Sure, some people like me will probably drop Netflix before they'll pay $35 a month or endure ads. But the current delta is only $10. I suspect they can make $10 a head in ad revenue in a year -- and if they can make $15, they would break even if they lost 3 ad-free subscribers but gained 2 back onto the ad tier. Anything better than those numbers would be a net gain.
Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.
This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic.
But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content.
It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the steam locomotive.
55” TV’s have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement especially when put in a normal living space.
The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.
55” TVs have been available for decades but not affordable. I purchased a 60” plasma TV about 2 decades ago but it cost about $2500 dollars. Now I can pick up a 55” 4K TV from Best Buy for $220.
The widespread affordability of large screen TVs has absolutely eroded the value of a movie theater.
A 55” Rear-projection television was way less than a 60” plasma TV back then. Like you I went a little upmarket but from what I recall budget 1080i options were well under a grand.
What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts. Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Rear projection TVs always looked like garbage. They were just the best option at the time. There’s a reason no one sells them anymore.
> What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts.
I think what matters for this conversation is how close the experience is to a theater. Rear projection 1080i is pretty far.
> Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Do you have some stats for how many were sold? Because I have hunch that sales of large screen TVs had absolutely skyrocketed over the past 20 years.
I had an awesome 1080p rear projection DLP TV in a dark room. A brighter screen works better in a bright room, but you really want a dark room for an optimal experience anyway.
The technology got quite good but inherently took up more space and eventually couldn’t compete on price. Though that also means you’re sitting closer to the screen which made replacement flatscreens in the same space look smaller.
Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts, but not by enough to overcome the downsides like the “person behind you chewing popcorn with their mouth open” factor. Also, movies are getting long enough to really need an intermission or two. Legs need stretching, bladders need emptying. If Hollywood and the theaters won’t provide that, at least at home I can use the pause button. I’m looking for a pleasant evening, not a simulation of what it’s like to be on a three hour flight.
It’s saying something that your post lists all the negative aspects of movie theaters and positive aspects of watching at home without actually specifying why “Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts”.
One way theaters win is that you can meet your friends / S.O. there without bringing them home; some people don't have living accommodations that are suited to hosting guests.
I went to see Avatar on a Imax screen. It was already about a month after the release so it was pretty quiet.
But those kinds of movies are rare- and it is expensive. You have to drive and park for half an hour, pay 30 euro for two tickets and ofcourse the drinks. Not something I want to do every week.
> Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer
This is silly. Most people don’t want to sit in a chair 3 feet from their TV to make it fill more of their visual area. A large number of people are also not watching movies individually. I watch TV with my family far more than I watch alone.
Tell that to every streaming on their tablets sitting on their stomachs. People even watch movies on their phones but they aren’t holding them 15’ away.
No one says the experience of watching on their tablet matches the experience of watching a movie in the theater.
But this isn’t the point. TVs are furniture. People generally have a spot where the TV naturally fits in the room regardless of its size. No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience. I’ve seen plenty of people do this to say it’s common behavior.
> No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
> People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience.
It’s a more private/personal experience. Turning on the TV means everyone watches.
> It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
You’re essentially arguing that people can arrange their furniture for the best viewing experience. Which is true, but also not what people actually do.
The set of people willing to arrange their furniture for the best movie watching experience in their home are the least likely to buy a small TV.
People still do this while home alone, you’re attacking a straw man.
> least likely to buy a small TV.
People can only buy what actually exists. My point was large TV’s “have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement” people owning them still went to the moves.
> People still do this while home alone, you’re attacking a straw man.
Maybe? You’re making blind assertions with no data. I have no idea how frequently the average person sits in front of their 60” TV by themselves and watches a movie on their tablet. My guess is not very often but again, I have no data on this.
> My point was large TV’s “have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement” people owning them still went to the moves.
And we come back to the beginning where your assertion is true but also misleading.
Most people have a large tv in their homes today. Most people did not have this two decades ago, despite then being available.
The stats agree. TV sizes have grown significantly.
> Maybe? You’re making blind assertions with no data.
I’ve seen or talked to more than five people doing it (IE called them, showed up at their house, etc) and even more people mentioned doing the same when I asked. That’s plenty of examples to say it’s fairly common behavior even if I can’t give you exact percentages.
Convince vs using the TV remove was mentioned, but if it’s not worth using the remote it’s definitely not worth going to the moves.
I do. I’ve researched the optimal distance for a smallish tv screen (which fits between the studio monitor stand). I move the tv closer when watching a film, it stands on hacked together wooden box like thing which has some yoga tools and film magazines in it - it has wheels. Crazy stuff.
There is a flipchart like drawing of my daughter covering the tv normally which we flip when watching films.
Living rooms are not that big to start with. I don't think you actually asked anyone's opinion on this! :D
Small TVs are not comfortable to watch. No one I know is okay with getting a smaller TV and moving their sofa closer. That sounds ridiculous. If there's any comfort to this capatilistic economy, it is the availability of technology at throw away prices. Most people would rather spend on a TV than save the money.
As for the theatre being obsolete, I do agree with you, atleast to some extent. I think everyone is right here. All factors combined is what makes going to the theatre not worth the effort for most of the movies. It's just another nice thing, not what it used to be.
Also, the generational difference too. I think teen and adolescents have a lot of ways to entertain themselves. The craze for movies isn't the same as it used to be. And we grew old(er). With age, I've grown to be very picky with movies.
Yeah, these things take a long time to shake out. We still have cable subscriptions because older people watch TV that way, but no one would tell you that linear television is thriving. We're only now seeing sports start to somewhat move to streaming services, when the writing's on the wall for a while.
And would you entertain the idea that few movies are worth seeing because going to the movie theatre is a hard sell for audiences, and studios produce movies that try and adapt to that reality?
My wife and I used to be avid theater goers. We used to watch at least five movies a year in the theaters; more if you count the times we went individually. Almost all of the theaters we visited were high-end lounge-style movie houses. Think "Alamo Drafthouse," which is a poster child for the downfall of theaters I'm about to describe.
We're the perfect demo for the movie theaters: free time and disposable income. Yet, we've only seen two movies in the theaters this year, and not for lack of trying.
Theaters are in a kind-of death spiral. they're losing revenue to streaming, so they can't invest in making an experience that attracts people to the theater, which leads to them losing more revenue to streaming, etc. Companies circling the drain are perfect targets for M&A and enshittification in the name of growth.
This is exactly what's happening to high-end theaters: Moviehouse and Eatery (a small chain of high-end theaters) selling to Cinépolis, Alamo Drafthouse selling to Private Equity, IPIC starting to raise red flags, and probably more.
The end result is always the same: endless ads appear where mostly-ad-free prerolls used to be, food and drink prices go up while quality goes down, service gets worse as staff are asked to do more for effectively-less pay, and previously-super comfortable lie-flat lounge seating gets more and more decrepit, all while increasing ticket prices!
All of this is even more insulting when the movies you pay to see are distributed by Netflix or Apple and are all but guaranteed to end up on their platforms in mere weeks, sometimes with better post-production.
We used to happily pay $100+ for a night out at the movies seven years ago. Our experiences have gotten costlier and more disappointing, however. Families deciding to drop $1500 on a 100" TV with an Atmos soundbar and relegating the theaters to the past makes total sense to me. It's sad --- theaters are a social experience and have given me so many great memories --- but it was all but an eventuality the minute streaming on Netflix went live.
Probably many underestimate the importance of the sound.
A home theater arguably is as much about the subwoofer and surround speakers as it is about the screen.
Especially the subwoofer has a big impact. When you feel the sound it's literally impactful. At other times, it really helps immerse yourself in the scene, even if it's not a typical bass sound, but like background noise in a busy city street.
The properly configured subwoofer makes you feel like you're there, while it just falls flat on a regular speaker.
That said, the fewest people have a home theater setup, so it's probably irrelevant to why people stopped going to the cinema.
Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.
The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.
Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.
Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.
Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.
Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.
If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.
Eh, the current 10-hour seasons are the worst of both worlds.
Telling a story in a "tight 90" means making very deliberate choices about what to include, what not to, and how to make scenes do double duty. Having 23 episodes a season lets you slow down, spend time with the characters that's not all focused on the season plot, it lets you have B-stories in every episode. A 10-hour season doesn't get to do that, but it doesn't enforce the same discipline as 90-120 minutes.
Compare Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I greatly enjoy SNW, but the characters and their relationships with each other are in no way as substantial as in DS9 (or even TNG, which was much less character-focused than DS9).
For many of the families I know it's less about the quality of movies than the cost and effort of going to the movies.
Going to the movies costs an extra hour for the round-trip to the theater, ~$40 for adult tickets, ~$60 for the kids (2h babysitter or movie tickets), ~$20 for concessions. Whereas watching at home on our 75" TV with homemade popcorn costs a tiny fraction of that, even including electricity and popcorn kernels and the amortized cost of the TV.
As nice as it can be to see a good movie in a theater, it's typically not so much better than watching at home that it's worth an extra hour and more than a hundred dollars.
Depends where you are. In Berlin we have around 20 movie theaters nearby. It costs 14 euros per ticket and the nearest theater is in a walking distance.
Yes we watch a lot of movies home, but there are multiple festivals every year curating interesting content.
I would argue not good enough but better. A home cinema depending on viewing distance can have superb visual qualify. Comfort is going to be impossible to beat to being at home. A lot of theater projectors top out at 4k just like home TVs and they’re not as bright. Also information density is lower (it’s 4k spread over a huge wall).
The only shortcoming now really is if you want to view with several people and socialize after, it may be difficult for someone to accommodate a large party with good viewing in their home without a theater setup. And of course audio, audio is where theaters can still stand out. It’s a pain in the ass for most homes to setup a good sound system, you really often do want a dedicated theater area which most aren’t going to have. A soundbar helps. You can Jerry rig some surround speakers into any space but it’s often a pain. So that’s really the last barrier: cheap low latency sound that can beat a theater.
For me comfort trumps the slightly degraded sound. Plus some baby crying or random person chatting during the movie can break that as well.
Not only the movie theater, Netflix killed social life. Well, streaming, feeds and their algorithms in general, but Netflix is very much the ones that really owned the narrative of what to do on a weekend night.
This is very anecdatal, certainly, but I've spoken/overheard a few neighborhood hospitality business owners that had to forclose or cut down due to the constant decline of people leaving the house to just meet in a bar or coffee shop. Only sport nights keeps them going, because sports online remain expensive in most places.
Maybe just my observation or my neck of the woods, but seems to fit the general sentiment of a reduced social environment on the streets in certain parts of the world.
I don't know, that metaphors doesn't hold. I still like going to a local theaters (not multiplexes!) few times a year, the screen is much better than any TV, and the whole experience is overall nicer (beer on tap, etc.). TV can be good enough, but it can't replace larger screen. Few weeks ago I saw Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid for the first time and I'm glad I could see it in a cinema.
I remember being amazed when the Michael Keaton’s Batman movie was released on VHS in the same year as the theatrical release. I had never seen a movie come out for home use that fast.
Disagree, I'd gladly go and watch movies in a cinema, the experience cannot be replicated at home, at least not unless you're very rich.. a 55" tv and a soundbar just doesn't do it.
For me, the price is killing it (80% of the reason) and bad movies (20%)... two tickets, drinks, popcorn/nachos/candy/something, and we're in the 50eur+ range. Then add the messy audiences, ads, trailer#1, more ads, trailer #2, another ad for some reason, and it's been 20 mintues of technially all ads for something that i paid money for. Then the movie is a total disappoint. I'm not into superheroes nor into pedro pascal, so most of the movies are out before i even buy the ticket and the rest are somehow... just 'bad'. Watching a bad movie at home is ok... you fall asleep, press stop, it doesn't matter... whatching a bad movie at an artsy film festival is also ok.. it was low budget, the ticket was 4 euros, no popcorn, had beer before you enter, so you can fall asleep in the cinema and hope not to snore. But 50 euros and all the ads for a bad movie is just too much.
I don't know about very rich — our spare room is set up as an office for WFH, along with a sofa bed, and I put a 100" projector screen on the wall opposite the sofa. A second hand projector, new (but not all that expensive) Denon surround sound system with speakers from an otherwise-junk 5.1 PC speaker set, and the experience is better than regular cinema. The best bit? I can turn the volume down as much as I want to.
Great home theater sound systems with subwoofers are cheap and readily available now. They make the home movie-watching experience dramatically better than it used to be.
Home theater sound is often/usually better than the theater, if you actually put any effort in. Many theaters can't do proper Dolby Atmos with height channels. You can install a setup at home for ~$1500.
Adds complexity, cost, and clutter. Meanwhile, the living situations of many (most?) people forbid it; no big-kicking subwoofers in apartments and condos, and you're probably keeping the volume at polite levels.
And for all that, it's likely still not up to par with a theater, unless you geeked out on a dedicated theater room.
I was flabbergasted to find that there are 100" TVs available for sub-$1500. Only a few years ago, they were five figures, minimum. Combined with a decent audio set-up, you really can have 90% of the theater experience at home.
As you say, Walmart now sells 100" 4k TV's with HDR for less than the average persons tax return. They often have them in-stock in the store.
Meanwhile most theaters are 2k, lack dolby vision or other HDR, have worse audio (many can't do Dolby Atmos with proper height channels), and are filled with people using their cell phones through the entire film.
Movie theaters can compete by installing LED screens. My company has a movie screen sized LED screen and it looks so much better than modern digital projectors.
I believe the Academy Awards and a few other things too also influence this. The rules to be eligible still very much favor legacy studios IIRC. But, with this that may change? Hard to say. I know that quite a few Netflix movies have had theatrical runs at random mom and pop theaters in Cali so they could meet eligibility requirements for the various awards.
> Frankenstein and Death by Lightning were two standout successes recently.
IMHO Frankenstein" was pretty terrible. The makeup was awful, the effects were cheap, the monster... wasn't a monster! The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
> The entire premise depends on him being a monster, not some sort of misunderstood, sympathetic EMO.
This is a misconception on a similar level to thinking the monster's name is Frankenstein: "As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself."
Thanks for stating the obvious and I assure you I know the story well. In order for the entire premise to work, there needs to be this conflict or tension between the perception of the "monster" and the true reality of his humanity. This movie failed at effectively portraying this conflict by humanizing the monster too much. Just my 2 cents.
Ah, I understand what you mean. I don't think the viewer necessarily needs to experience the dissonance personally for the premise to work. That said, I agree that it could have afforded being less black and white, it at times felt like a children's movie with how plainly the message is communicated.
Completely agree. The movie ruined Dr. Frankenstein's motives by adding his benefactor, and ruined his monster by removing the inner rage he felt and expressed towards the world the shunned him. A very, very odd decision by GDT. Similar to Spike Lee remaking High & Low, but removing the critique of capitalism and the complicity of the wealthy so he could make Denzel the true protagonist.
I disagree that it's a misconception. Yes, the premise is that the true 'monster' was the creator, but the monster itself is intentionally grotesque and disfigured to teach us the beauty on the inside lesson.
He is unsettling but definitely not simply grotesque and disfigured:
> His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
The creature was always supposed to be a mix of sympathetic and monstrous. He becomes a monster by turning himself implacably toward revenge, but we can sympathize with him for what sets him on that path. The entire premise rests more on Victor being a monster. I thought the movie handled both of those fairly well. There's really no living director who gets the Gothic sensibility quite as well as del Toro.
>His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
As I said, the contrast between "pretty" or "human" traits vs "monster" just wasn't there.
Eh, I like an interesting spin on a classic. I’ve seen/heard the Frankenstein plot and small variations on it many times, taking a different direction is a good way to keep in a general universe but develop something new. If you’re not going to come up with new interesting content, at least don’t rehash the exact story I’ve heard many times. But that’s just my preference—I really enjoyed it and have become a fan of Guillermo del Toro works recently (due to exposure on Netflix). I’m not huge critic really so I won’t speak to artistic merit but I can at least say I really enjoyed it.
Netflix has always had one or three stand-out projects over a year, but is that what we want from studios? It is like the tech model: 1 big success for 10+ duds (the VC show) or another superhero installment (the Google/Meta cash cow movie).
HBO is expensive and most people don't have it. Ergo most people never see or hear about their lower quality content. Only the good stuff that their rich friends rave about.
You not recognizing their shows doesnt mean they are bad. Ive seen most of those and the overwhelming majority are at least solid. I understand netflix's business model, Im just annoyed that theyre buying HBO because they will likely make it worse. Maybe netflix wants more prestige content and will let HBO be HBO but I doubt it.
> If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?
Yes because the situation of WB has nothing to do with their performance.
In 1990s they merged with TIME publishing right before the internet killed all magazines. In 2000s with AOL right before th dot com bubble. In 2010s with AT&T who realised they needed a shit ton of money to roll out 5G so they took a massive loan and charged it to Warner debt.
So WARNER keeps performing and the business side keeps adding debt from horrible decisions
Honestly Warner would have been fine if they hadn't been saddled with the debt that AT&T used to buy them. It wasn't an issue of Warner's business performance.
It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity.
In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
> It's about all the other projects that would have had great quality but did not secure funding because Netflix prefers to fund mass-produced mediocrity. In Germany we have a saying "Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn".
In parallel, they're also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there's a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what's happening while it's happening. I did some digging and learned that they may be dumbing down their shows because they know users typically look at their phones while watching Netflix and users are more likely to drop off of a show if they don't know what's going on.
Frankenstein looks oddly cheap and fake with really bad lighting in many scenes. You can tell they used the volume virtual production to shoot scenes and it doesn't look great.
I would disagree. I think what you see is the popular, but less well done material. Dept Q was an original 8-10 episode detective drama that was highly thought of. It received no press but it likely showed up on your carousel. Netflix knows eventually you will find it but not sure they can bring you everything.
HBO releases tons of great shows every year. They will reliably have at least one running all the time. Netflix releases maybe one good season a year padded by endless amounts of cruft.
Fair. Everything is an adaption of some IP somewhere. I think the most interesting job now is cranking out self published books hoping to get adapted, but not well known to US audiences and was highly rated by critics was my point
They have a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” Sure it has a lot of crap but they also have major hits like Squid Games, Stranger Things, (both became cultural phenomena) and Daredevil.
I think such is the reality of serving a large customer base on something subjective like movies and TV. Most people would find most content not that appealing, and a small subset they like. The problem is everyone's small subject are different.
It's like having a restaurant that serves 300 million people. You can try to offer every type of food there is, but most people may not like most of them. Which is fine, as long as you have something they like.
I think you are true to a point. But great movies get almost universal praise with scores of 9/10 on IMDb or near 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The same goes for food; there are things that are quite controversial, but who says no to fantastic ice cream or bread?
But most importantly for movies, it is not the micro-genre that decides. People who are not into fantasy or astrology still love Lord of the Rings or Interstellar because they are particularly highly produced, where all crafts making up that movie are treated highly instead of strategizing and optimizing.
Yea but those are typically self selected sets. People that are interested in that particular type of movies watches it and rates it highly. But if you only offered that movie to the entire population, likely a large portion of the population won't want to watch it.
For example, The Shawshank Redemption has very high rating on IMDB, but also many people have never seen it and are not interested in watching it.
i dont think this should matter, plenty of conglomerates have brands across quality levels.
think old navy, gap, banana republic.
the quality difference is important for the conglomerate same with netflix vs hbo, the corporate benefit is being able to save on costs around like amortizing the corporate side of things (accounting, marketing, real estate, research ect)
Major studios haven't made excellent content for a while, so them acquiring WB doesn't matter much. If you want to see the "excellent" films (i.e. I'm assuming you mean well-directed, well-written, well-acted, meaningful, etc.), watch film festivals. They have lots of fantastic stuff, and their movies are getting easier to access.
We've lost nothing with WB except more Joker: Foile a Deux and Wonka garbage.
It feels like a race to the bottom. Movie and TV content quality has taken a nose dive in the past decade.
Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s hard to find these days.
Maybe it’s because producing movies/TV is so much easier and cheaper that there is now so much low quality noise, that it makes finding the high quality signal so difficult.
But it seems like you used to be able to go to the theater and you’d have to decide between several great options.
Now, I almost never care to go because it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.
> it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.
This was probably always true, with some randomly amazing years every now and again, like 1972 (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What's Up Doc?,...).
IMDB listing shows 470 films released US in 1972. Google says there are ~3,900 IMDB entries for 1972 (why the 4X discrepancy?). The hit ratio was veeeery small even in killer years.
the kind of person who watches a LOT of television and movies likes slop, it's not complicated.
still different than media people PAY for. for example substack sells empty opinions that agree with you. it is totally wrong to say that slop sells. it is merely the highest engagement for an audience that DOESN'T pay.
you could say, "engagement is the wrong metric," but if that were really true, tech jobs would contract like 50%. the alternative becomes, "would you like fries with that?"
Same with Extraordinary Attorney Woo and a lot of "originals" on netflix. They'll just buy the rights to air something and then slap their name on it like they made it. That said, I actually appreciate them looking for good media produced overseas and buying up the rights to those shows to bring them to the US. It's a good thing (although it'd be nice if put some effort in making sure there are always quality subs) but it can cause some people to think netflix is producing more good shows than they actually are.
I just checked and I've rated 1,788 movies and 326 TV series so 2,114 titles total on IMDB.
I agree with this take. Netflix has some good originals, but it's not in the same category as HBO/WB. Most (not all) of their series feel cheap, shallow, unoriginal. The quality and hit rate just aren't the same.
I have 459 titles on my IMDB watchlist and a tiny percentage of it is available on Netflix (if at all), but this is anecdotal and might have to do something to where I live.
Netflix outside of the US is a very different experience.
In the US, it's mostly their own productions and older content they explicitly acquired, but elsewhere, especially in markets that don't have a local HBO or Disney streaming service, they have incredible backlogs.
I remember finding basically everything I could wish for on there when traveling in SE Asia almost a decade ago, compared to a still decent offering in Western Europe, and mostly cobwebs in the US.
Cinema used to be a really good shared experience. I don't go to cinema anymore because we have a newborn at home, but we used to pre-order tickets in advanced for movies we really wanted to see (like Wicked last year, Fantastic 4 this year) and the theater was almost empty at opening night for both of those.
Contrast a few years ago when avengers endgame came out, and Spiderman far from home came out shortly after that, and No Way Home a few years after that... They were lively events. People dressed up, the theater handed out free swag and merch, and it was just a really cool shared experience, almost akin to a live concert.
I don't know exactly what's changed in that time, considering No Way Home came out after Covid and it was still a spectacle of an event, but I don't think cinema will get its magic back.
A few years ago I did go to a "Stranger Things" experience and I think that might be the future of shared experiences/narratives. It was essentially a week-long pop-up event, you'd get tickets, and it was basically a "walking simulator" that took you through a narrative within the Stranger Things universe. This wasn't just a bunch of people looking at a screen, it was live actors, holographics, sound design, lights, a lot of crazy stuff for a pop-up venue.
As a fan of the franchise it was really well done. A friend of mine want to a similar "Experience" for the Bridgeton universe, which I care nothing about, but she really enjoyed it as well.
So I think if Netflix were to reimagine cinema, it would probably be in that direction.
I don't want you to think I'm picking on you; but, I've been thinking about the MBA-bullshittism "consolidation" for a while. It's really a euphemism for "trust formation", right? It seems like we fought tooth-and-nail just 100 years ago to set up real antitrust laws, with real teeth... and now every industry is "consolidated". What's going on in health and seed and cars makes me seethe.
Apple is at least trying to fill their old niche. It seems quite telling that the only company truing to do the whole “prestige TV” thing is a kind of side-project for a hardware company. At least nobody can buy them, though.
Apple seems to have a no-nudity policy more or less (or at least, minimal nudity).
I dunno. Sex is part of human existence so it shouldn’t be off-limits for media IMO. But the sort of perfunctory thing where every show on Netflix or HBO has to have some nudity in the first couple episodes was a bit annoying. I don’t mind the lack of nudity in Apple’s stuff. There’s a balance that Apple falls on the “overly conservative” side of, though.
What’s adult mean to you? Nudity, violence, I dunno. Severance considers things like self-identity and the fake personalities, and fake social constructs of our workplaces… it seems more adult to me than a gangster or cowboy story.
I also quite like Pluribus, it feels like actual sci-fi (in the same way 3 Body Problem from Netflix does, actually—legit sci-fi, not action heroes in space).
Warner Bros has had their best summer in years (Sinners, Superman, etc). HBO still makes highly regarded prestige TV series (The Last Of Us, Task, etc). This is just false.
That video game/superhero IP adaptations are considered "prestige TV" says more about diminished creative expectations than HBO continuing to uphold it's traditional high standards.
Nothing against people who like them, to each his own. But the throughput of quality programming out of HBO has dropped off a cliff through it's multiple changes in ownership.
How are Netflix created contents profitable? I guess Netflix pays shows based on user time spent, and a Netflix show is profitable if users spend time on it, and not on other shows?
I actually think that’s the opposite of Netflix. TV shows rarely make it past a second season, as soon as there’s even a mild drop in viewing figures they drop a property like a hot potato.
Note the OP's algo was *while* profitable. You're focused on shows that never make it. I think this is true of the cash cows, while dogs are historically (with only one or two channels so limited broadcast bandwidth) networks could be far more brutal while Netflix needs a much bigger catalog.
Game of thrones problem wasnt going on too long quite the opposite. The show runners were assholes to the author of the books their show was based on and he wouldn't work with them anymore then when they got an offer from Disney they decided to cut the show short and finish it one season and cut major character development to get to the pre determined ending resulting in people having sudden character changes or clever characters start carrying the idot ball.
The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.
The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now? Not saying every single thing they make anymore is bad, but the average quality is far lower than it used to be.
> The majority of that list is quite old. Have you seen what they're doing now?
Adolescence (which won big at the Emmy's this year), Stranger Things, The Beast in Me, Last Samurai Standing, A Man on the Inside, The Gentlemen, Absentia, Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Arcane, Squid Game, Dynamite Kiss, Delhi Crime, etc.
You mention Arcane, and that reminds me that Netflix's support of animation is really undervalued. LD&R has been mentioned, but they also helped bankroll a ton of marquee projects from Science Saru (Devilman Crybaby, DanDaDan), Orange (Beastars, Trigun Stampede), and Trigger (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Delicious in Dungeon). They picked up Pantheon and Scavenger's Reign. They've got another season of Blue Eye Samurai coming. Oh, and K-Pop Demon Hunters.
If you care about animation as either a visual or storytelling medium, Netflix has made a lot of the best movies and series of the past few years possible or accessible. (Having to pirate Pantheon S2 because it was initially only released in Australia was not fun.)
If you listed the best movies or books or plays or albums or video games you could think of, they would tend to be older too. 99% of stuff is kinda crap, always.
The Pitt, The Penguin, Hacks, White Lotus, The Rehearsal, The Last of Us, The Chair Company--all shows off the top of my head that debuted or aired a season in 2025. A few of which won several Emmys, and all of which are critically acclaimed.
imo, that's the worst thing about Netflix. its not that they don't produce good series, its that when they do they have a high peobability of getting cancelled.
I feel like people who say this never watched a lot of TV before Netflix. Every popular show overstays its welcome and gets cancelled once people get bored. That's just how TV works. Netflix isn't even the worst offender.
Netflix doesn't wait for people to get bored. It canceled Kaos the same month they released it! It had good reviews and a lot of binges but that didn't save it from the axe.
Dead Boy Detectives was canceled less than 5 months after it was released.
With so much competing for our time there's no way everyone is going to jump on every show immediately after it gets released and watch it several times over so whatever bullshit metrics netflix is using look impressive enough for them to give the show's fans a satisfying conclusion.
If you watched TV before netflix you might remember that sometimes it took two or more entire seasons before a show became popular. Some extremely popular and successful shows were like that and would never have happened if netflix had put them out.
If you unsubscribe for more than a year then Netflix will delete your profile data entirely and discoverability gets so much worse. I signed up for a month to watch Star Trek: Prodigy S2 right when it dropped and was so offput by the "vanilla" recommendations of a fresh profile I really didn't see any point but to cancel it as soon as I finished that one exact show I knew I cared to watch and could find only with the search feature despite it being a new release.
Discoverability is getting worse too. Netflix's position is that consumers hate having choices and that their customers just want netflix to choose what they're going to watch for them. That was the goal behind their last UI change which was supposed to guess at "your moods and interests in the moment" and only show you a small number of things netflix thinks you want.
In an impressive bit of gaslighting they actually said "With bigger boxes, we’re showing more information up front to help you make a better decision," because nothing gives you 'more information' like giving you barely any information on the screen at all. They also spent a fortune infesting their product with AI, but you still can't use it to get basic features people have wanted for ages like a list of everything leaving netflix in the next month.
In reality this just lets netflix hide more of what's avilable from you so that they can aggressively advertise what they want you watch instead of what you'd rather be watching and as a bonus they can charge companies extra for visibility/not hiding their shows from subscribers.
I would rather a show go on too long and let me decide when to stop watching, like how my Simpsons DVD rips are only seasons 1 through 10 (including season 11 holdovers, so my set ends on Sneed lol)
Of course Jessica Jones is on Disney+ now. I think most of those others are still on Netflix, but it is a bit of a problem for them - when they don't own the content they eventually lose the ability to stream it, especially as the content owners have entered the streaming space too.
Man a second season would be so great. They could even recast the main character, given their personality lives in a brain disk. But I'd rather they didn't.
I got netflix a looooong time ago when they still had good movies on there and weren't cycling. It kept getting worse and worse. Then I got rid of it a few years back.
Nearly everything on there sucks now. It's all campy politically-undertoned garbage and not anything I would consider fun to watch or a great way to waste my time. The first squid games was neat. A novel concept and interesting. Then Netflix did what they do best and netflix-ify it into a political message rather than a horror film. The latest Ed Gein show had the potential to be amazing but ended up falling into the same campy, political, director had too much creative liberty trash.
They are a tired company that has strayed from their roots. The Warner Bros acquisition makes complete sense because the entire media entertainment apparatus is capable of only producing:
1. Remakes of movies that are themselves remakes
2. An hour and a half movie where they try to inject The Message into as many frames as possible
3. A campy nearly serious movie that needs stupid jokes injected for the squirrel-brained morons that pay for it.
The entertainment industry is in a financial nosedive because no one wants this garbage anymore.
>it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner?
HBO hasn't produced good content in years at this point. Since before the last season or two of Game of Thrones, I should think. The other brands in Warner didn't even really have that much prestige.
It is probably not just a Netflix issue. But it is also quite a philosophical question as to who is to blame. The consumers who watch and pay, or the ones who fund the mediocrity.
It is definitely sad to see Netflix turn from their early phase, where they valued quality over quantity, and since have reversed that.
I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
>I just want to see more great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time.
Its out there, there just isn't great curation and in a world of ever increasing content more people just dont ever find it and accept whatever mediocrity they find.
I'd have to be younger, 3 notches to the left of Lenin, and in a perpetual billionaires-are-evil rage mode to find it compelling. Got through most of the first season, which is a rare point to quit a show... we either quit after the first episode, or make it all the way to the end. Painfully bad, and not half as much as the stupid Sex and the City way either.
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.