Netflix To Let Tens of Thousands of Subscribers Preview Content (wsj.com) 55
Streaming giant plans global expansion of program that helped make 'Don't Look Up' less serious. From a report: Before Netflix's 2021 release of "Don't Look Up," a small group of its U.S. subscribers previewed the film and told the streaming giant that the movie came across as too serious, according to people familiar with the matter. The film's creators used that feedback to dial up the comedic element of the film and make it appeal to a broader audience, the people said. While the film received lukewarm reviews among critics, "Don't Look Up" was nominated for four Academy Awards and broke a Netflix record for weekly viewing hours of a film, a record it still holds. Netflix is now planning to expand its group of previewers beyond its current base of 2,000-plus subscribers to include tens of thousands of users around the world early next year, people familiar with those plans said.
Netflix is working to ensure that every dollar spent on content yields the highest level of member attention and engagement across its 223 million-strong subscriber base globally, and comes as streamers more heavily scrutinize content spending and focus more on profitability. Netflix this year suffered two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses and has told Wall Street it expects to keep its spending on new shows and movies to about $17 billion annually for the next few years. The company returned to subscriber growth in the third quarter.
Netflix is working to ensure that every dollar spent on content yields the highest level of member attention and engagement across its 223 million-strong subscriber base globally, and comes as streamers more heavily scrutinize content spending and focus more on profitability. Netflix this year suffered two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses and has told Wall Street it expects to keep its spending on new shows and movies to about $17 billion annually for the next few years. The company returned to subscriber growth in the third quarter.
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Surveys seem to indicate that McDonald's is the best restaurant ever!
I wonder (Score:2)
From what I hear, some of the endings of the new Indiana Jones movie have Harrison Ford killed off at the end, (not surprising - who wants to see Indiana Jones and the Unholy Nursing Home) and a lady taking his trademark hat, then going into a ti
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who wants to see Indiana Jones and the Unholy Nursing Home
Look, watching Harrison Ford go full Don Quixote in an assisted living facility sounds like the sort of movie I'd actually love to watch.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Test screenings are not new (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a "current trend". Hollywood has been doing edits and reshoots based on test screenings [wikipedia.org] since at least the 1950's. Sunset Boulevard had it's entire first reel cut due to audience reaction during test screenings, but that didn't stop it from becoming a critical and box-office success and winning 3 Oscars. While the process can certainly be abused by studio execs looking for an excuse to make changes the director doesn't want, the process often results in an improved film. The only new thing here is Netflix is able to fine-tune the process by selecting a broad demographic of their subscribers to be test viewers, rather than just asking a bunch of random people at a theatre if they want to be in a test screening.
...but this could be (Score:3)
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The best part of the choose-your-own adventure Black Mirror movie was that you could immediately skip back and see a different replay of events. As a linear movie it was bland, but as a movie where you see the multiverse of options that spiral out of control it was pretty interesting.
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Ha
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Just seems like the current trend continuing....take older generation's positive, strong male figures...heroes, and either replace them or delete them or re-geneder them, re-race them or make them homosexual.
It is a matter of tearing them down. It is a very deliberate process. And yes, there will end up being pushback.
I was really pleased when gay marriage was enabled by law. I know enough non-cis people that it seemed ridiculous to discriminate against them in any way. But this new trend is at best, trying too hard, and irritating people.
Not sure why this keeps going....rather than either tear down or replace old icons, why not just come up with new heroes/characters with whatever sex/race you want and come up with unique adventures for them?
Because the tearing down is the real motivation. The political view is more important than the ability to write a screenplay, so they hire people based on political view.
What the fuck is driving all of this?
G
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the tearing down is the real motivation.
lol. They have simply figured out there's money to be made serving an audience that wants to see more integrated casts. That's the whole story, hollywood does not give any fucks about what their influence on culture actually is so long as they have enough of one to be profitable.
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Considering how these woke re-writes of old programs, (along with some of the more extreme progressive new shows) are bombing at the box-office....it ain't the money being made like you allude to.
That was my original pondering...i
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Considering how these woke re-writes of old programs, (along with some of the more extreme progressive new shows) are bombing at the box-office....it ain't the money being made like you allude to.
That was my original pondering...it can't be for the money, because it is costing them dollars at the box office over all.
Look how well a movie the was not with a message, not pushing an agenda did...Top Gun 2.
It killed at the box office.
Movies like Lightyear? Not so much...
The movie Bros? Not so much...
The list goes on.
Hollywood MUST be pushing the agenda over money...as that they are surely staffed with accountants that can plainly see where the money is and where it is not....
But they eventually do have to make money, lest they have a really hard time getting people to front the money to make the films. To add to the list She Hulk - many(most?) found that just offensive.
Charlie's angel's feminist reboot https://www.newsweek.com/eliza... [newsweek.com]
The all female reboot of Ghostbusters - yeah, that did well, or maybe not.
Live action Mulan failing in the biggest movie market in the world. Impressive for a movie presumably aimed at the Chinese Market, even filmed in China.
Disney's Stran
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Have to disagree. it's not about money. Hollywood has been bleeding.. no... hemorrhaging money for over a decade. Warner just finally ran out and may have hit bottom and started to get focused on profit again.
As a liberal-- I see the way the far left and the misandrist took over hollywood and made a crapton of stuff that attacked customers who did pay (and often paid multiple times) and tried to appeal to people who were not customers and didn't pay.
If Disney had taken a well curated version of the Exten
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Hollywood accounting FTW. "Lose" money on the picture up front, then more than make up for it with licensing for the next... well, forever, basically... while not having to pay taxes on your initial investment.
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What the hell is a "non-cis" person??
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What the hell is a "non-cis" person??
Short for cisgender - Non heterosexual or non binary or pansexual. I've worked with many. I only know two I don't like, and that isn't based on who they want to bump uglies with.
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Honestly, I'm still not quite sure what all you're talking about.
When did it suddenly become so difficult for people to clearly know who or what they like to fuck?
Good Lord...I've never known anyone that had that problem.
This is something recent, and I dunno WTF is pushing this.....
There can NOT be that many people in the world
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Hollywood has rarely been a forward thinking creator of originality. Mostly it tries to tap into the zeitgeist, and when something works it repeats it. Hollywood quickly figures out when a formula is losing and stops doing it. So clearly there's a sizable population out there who wants a more inclusive attitude from their movies.
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There's nothing wrong with new content and characters that are more "inclusive".
What is the problem being discussed, is the outright destruction and re-racing/re-gendering of long established characters and the outright destruction or replacement of established strong male heroes.
There's not a need to destroy what we already have...just create new characters and places and stories if you want that "div
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There's nothing wrong with new content and characters that are more "inclusive".
What is the problem being discussed, is the outright destruction and re-racing/re-gendering of long established characters and the outright destruction or replacement of established strong male heroes.
There's not a need to destroy what we already have...just create new characters and places and stories if you want that "diversity".
This! Let's take some counter examples.
How about "Tobacco Road with an all Chinese cast?
Steel Magnolias with an all redneck male cast?
The color purple with no African Americans in it
Thelma and Louise with male stars
Now take the basic premise of all these and reverse them.
All of this shows the destructive impulses and the fact that these woke people are not capable of writing original work.
Add a "hide" button and filters. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is not lack of content or exposure. The main problem with Netflix is too much content.
What Netflix needs right now are:
1. "Hide this title" button so that we can permanently and easily hide titles we don't want to see from the interface. Currently, the only way to do it is to manually add titles to a self-imposed parental control restricted titles blacklist.
2. Filters. The ability to apply profile-level, permanent filters to hide content based on genres, actors and keywords. For example, myself, I'd like to hide any LGBTQ+ content or films staring Nicolas Cage. Forever.
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The problem is not lack of content or exposure. The main problem with Netflix is too much content.
What Netflix needs right now are: 1. "Hide this title" button so that we can permanently and easily hide titles we don't want to see from the interface. Currently, the only way to do it is to manually add titles to a self-imposed parental control restricted titles blacklist. 2. Filters. The ability to apply profile-level, permanent filters to hide content based on genres, actors and keywords. For example, myself, I'd like to hide any LGBTQ+ content or films staring Nicolas Cage. Forever.
On a related note, I'd like to hide most of the modern content, and have streaming NetFlix look more like DVD/BlueRay NetFlix.
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B. Every Nic Cage movie has to be evaluated on its own merits. Half of them are watchable, half of those are excellent. Seek out Pig and you'll see what I mean.
C. I, too, was missing the whole DVD by mail setup. Now
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1. No you can't. Clicking "Thumbs down" does absolutely nothing to hide a title. It just feeds the algorithm which dictates what they throw onto your home page but has no effect on visibility as such.
2. It's down to individual tastes. All I'm saying is that given the amount of crap on Netflix, we should have a way to decide what we do and do not want to see. Once you enable people to do it, their satisfaction will raise and netflix will have a higher retention because one-portfolio-to-rule-them-all doesn't
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I think I said the last part wrong. I meant to try and find some curated service that show the types of movies you like. Criterion gives you art house movies, Mubi does foreign films. They seem to be a step above your basic streamers. I can do without HBO and Netflix.
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If not for cross-origin restrictions, I'd gladly write my own frontend for Netflix with all the missing functionality. ;-)
One day I'll hack into netflix and expose their dummy thumbs up/down agorithm because I honestly think it doesn't do anything. ;-)
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That gets hard. Lhat is KGBTQ+ content? Orange is the New Black simultaneously both is and isn't LGBTQ+. Does it mean any movie with a queer person is to be filtered, like Kimmy Schmidt? Block all Rock Hudson movies? Maybe you need a Kinsey dial to tune in just the right amount of homosexual characters before it's too much?
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They've always done this - though in the past it was for comedic effect. Nowdays with gay characters in serious roles and not being ridiculed seems to be what is upsetting people.
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Been saying this for years, but for some reason Reed Hastings is not returning my calls.
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They are unlikely to implement this, because constantly hyping an unsuccessful show is how they get viewing stats. You see something on your home screen for long enough, maybe you'll click on it. Boom, there's another view for Netflix's viewing stats. I can't find the source now, but I understand that if you watch a show for more than two minutes, it counts as a "view." That's right, if it takes you 121 seconds to realise that a show sucks and you never want to watch it again, Netflix will claim that you wa
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The 121 seconds got me interested. I'll need to do some more reading on this. Thanks.
Yep, I've believed for a long time already that the "trending" section is just a made-up ranking based on what Netflix belives to be worth promoting at a given time, which most of the time means their own titles. "Trending" isn't alone in this, btw. If you look at all the rows on your home screen, you will notice that these days nearly always there are at least 2 Netflix titles always visible on every row.
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OK, I did some more digging too and have a couple of links:
https://www.wired.com/story/ne... [wired.com]
https://www.yahoo.com/entertai... [yahoo.com]
Hope this helps. FWIW, I searched on duckduckgo for "what counts as a view on netflix"
of by and for the dumbest (Score:2)
Who is going to waste their time previewing movies for Netflix for free? Right. Now your content will be even more tailored for morons.
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The same people who buy a new whatever every year because it's new, of course.
People like new stuff, and they like feeling special.
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Yup, that annual new pair of underwear is great!
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Neilson did this for years. They guilted my parents into becoming a Neilson household by telling them how important it is for television. Then Neilson got upset because they had children's shows on all the time. Well, no shit, Neilson. You
Wish Disney Would Do That. (Score:3)
I'm certain that "Soul" had a fully completed ending where Joe remained in the afterlife, having passed his opportunity to 22. It would have been more poignant and emotionally satisfying. But I'll bet it died in early screenings, to be replaced with, "Oh, and we just chose to send you back because the 'rules' are completely arbitrary and can be bypassed trivially for a traditional 'happy ending'."
I really liked the movie, but even if it didn't survive in that form, I would have liked to see that version as an early viewer.
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People who can write good stories are rare. Mostly what we get are bad fan-fic that's been polished up with some witty quips and smoothed out dialogues. Even good stories are bought and then eventually broken before they make it on the screen. Some authors try for decades to get their content made by someone who won't ruin it, or they give up and do it themselves (and even that doesn't work sometimes).
Beginning of the end (Score:2)
"Netflix is working to ensure that every dollar spent on content yields the highest level of member attention and engagement"
So they're basically admitting that their business model depends on increasing numbers of users and longer time spent watching TV.
This is not a business model that will last a long time. Pump up the stock, sell before it crashes.
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That statement didn't seem to say "growth" in it. You always need to keep the customer's interest, if you don't then you lose profits. Any company that ways "we don't care if people like our movies or not" will quickly end up being just a niche.
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I don't think that's true. They know they've capped on the number of likely users, save for occasional spikes when really popular content appears. They show all signs of transitioning to a more utility-style way of doing business.
2021 net income: $5B
2021 net income growth: 85%
2021 net margin: 17.23$
"Pump up the stock, sell before it crashes" tells me you didn't spend even 1 second looking at the fundamentals before passing judgement. They might not have a great growth year, but they're in no danger of going
Popularity not quality (Score:2)
Heading for the lowest common denominator. Pandering sells!
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Heading for the lowest common denominator. Pandering sells!
Maybe. Or maybe they're increasing the reviewer pool so they can select from the pool the demographic group that they want to review particular content. Certainly the way the reviews are conducted now facilitates that sort of approach: the Netflix Preview Club is invite-only. Subscribers are required to sign an NDA before watching the film and then answer a series of survey questions. You get a special Netflix account, and they email when they have a movie in there for you to watch. Usually, you have to wat
Yes, pandering sells. (Score:2)
And anybody not pandering to a great extent isn't doing smart business. Netflix is a business, not an ivory tower think tank with unlimited funds and no financial responsibilities. If you're running a convenience store, it's fine to have a box of truffles on the shelf, but you'd better have a lot more potato chips and M&Ms.
Better than the Disney Trend (Score:1)
Giving the property to writers and directors who hate the existing customers of an I.P. and who have even explicitly said they are not happy unless half the customers leave angry.
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