I don’t watch many series and what I do try, I get tired of after a few seasons (I quit on Stranger Things midway through the 3rd season - it just wasn’t cutting it anymore).
I sign up for movies. And if they force a 3- or 6-month subscription on me, ah well, guess I’ll stick to the library or Redbox. With my last trip to Netflix land, I watched what I wanted to watch in the first 2 weeks, the last 2 weeks were pretty lean. So, no - more than a month doesn’t work for me.
I will say, a positive for Netflix, are movies they’ve been bringing in from India. Not the majors like Ray or Sen, but some more obscure or modern releases. One I really like that I’d never heard of was Sardar Udham, just a phenomenal film IMHO. Sarpatta Parambarai and a superhero flick Minnal Murali were both good as well.
Because technically, Disney does not fully own Hulu. Yet. Comcast still owns about a 30% stake in the company. They HAVE effectively turned over all creative control to Disney and are planning to sell their shares to Disney at fair market value in 2024, but it hasn’t happened yet, so until then Disney literally CANNOT fold Hulu into D+.
If it continues I’m sure it’ll move over to Discovery+/HBO when those two services merge (which I’ve heard is in the works), but the Animaniacs deal was inked before Disney officially acquired a majority stake in the company by buying Fox and then purchasing AT&T’s 10% stake from them. That happened around 2019, and the first season of revived Animaniacs was announced in 2018.
The last movie I saw in a theater was Avengers: Endgame.
I still haven’t seen the latest Spider-Man movie. I kind of want to, but my interest in superhero movies has been waning. Endgame was a really good stepping-off point. The Spidey movie is kind of an appendix to the Infinity Saga, though, so I’ll probably catch it eventually.
Bone was the only animated series I was really anticipating at Netflix, but this is a big loss in terms of future potential.
Netflix seems to be panicking, and not trying very hard to conceal it. Their panic solution seems to be: let’s go back to doing everything people hated about cable TV… because we don’t have any other template to work with.
I think they probably need a top-down change of leadership and vision. Maybe Elon Musk will offer to buy them, as long as they produce his pet project: Ayn Rand Playhouse.
I’ve only seen one movie in theaters since the pandemic, and it was that Anthony Bourdain doc, whose name escapes me right now. That was because it was during the time some movies were being released to both theaters and streaming at the same time, but that one was just in theaters. Granted, it was at an art house theater, and it wasn’t packed. I otherwise saw new releases on HBOMax, when that was a thing. My 40-year-old bladder isn’t strong enough to get through The Batman without a pause button.
I prefer physical media to just relying on streaming services. I will pay good money to have a Blu-ray set of the Marvel Studios shows than praying my Internet won’t break on me. And I cannot be alone in that statement. This mindset has been going on ever since the rise of VHS & Betamax. None of the studios want their customers to have physical copies because they think they won’t make as much money. And it’s a mindset that’s only going to hurt them in the long run.
Netflix is quickly becoming the modern-day Icarus of streaming. They allowed their egos to get the better of them. With the competition growing as it has, it was only a matter of time before one of them hit the breaking point. Sadly, Netflix was the one to suffer the consequences. Being the first doesn’t always guarantee you’ll be the best.
Saw another headline that NetFlix’s stock dropped 37% on the news they were entertaining the idea of an advert-supported tier. But these execs still won’t get the clue that people do not want to watch ads.
Netflix is a growth stock. If they’ve come even close to peak subscriptions and this would be a strong indication they have, NFLX is overpriced by about 13X or it could lose 90%+ of price to reach fair value. (I am not a financial advisor and this is not investing advice.)
That was something that came up in an article I read today (Variety, NYT) don’t remember which, but NetFlix sort of set the bar of paying top dollar for talent (writers, directors, and actors) because they were chasing awards. Now that reality has set in, there are some in Hollyweird who are wondering if the gravy train from streaming service gigs is about to dry up. Not just from NetFlix, but from everyone as subscribers level off and budgets get tight.
