Netflix Is Forcing Hollywood into a Talent War
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Hollywood was underpaying producers relative to the value they generated. Netflix saw an opportunity and signed deals with producers more in line with the value they generated. Because of this competition, Hollywood is now paying producers more.
Sounds like an unequivocal good thing for film and television. Talented producers get paid more. More money is being invested in films and shows. Obviously, films and shows are making enough money to justify these deals.
In the movie and tv biz, I think everything is basically unionized for regular crew and actors, so they have basic decent pay. Is there any down side to this?
https://www.quora.com/What-does-above-below-the-line-mean-in...
I don't think the biggest problem is that software engineers are under-compensated. It's more like assets are overpriced, so we're not able to buy houses.
Do you realise that you can buy assets, and houses, outside of California ? I promise you that it's really really easy to buy a house as a software engineer.
Well it seems like for average rank and file actors, directors have a lot of power of choice, which is how you end up with all the sexual harassment scandals that keep getting reported.
Netflix in contrast never does backend deals that way. It’s all laid up front. It actually means that Netflix shoulders the risk upfront.
So Networks are now simply switching to the upfront higher risk model where you eliminate backends and pay all upfront. You can’t say producers are “making more”, it’s just a different way to pay out. And again it’s a shift in risk management.
is this still a thing? if the studio is promising $50k + 5% of "profits", but you know that's going to be $0 because of hollywood accounting (which everyone does), why would you assign that "5% of profits" any value? as a rational actor, you would see the compensation as $50k, nothing more.
As a result, Hollywood has started manipulating the gross numbers to hide money.
The Lord of the Rings lawsuit was over the right to audit the books to detect such fraud. No studio will ever actually let you look at the books. Period. If you sue they’ll drag it out then settle.
...No studio will ever actually let you look at the books. Period. If you sue they’ll drag it out then settle.
I used to have Hollywood studios as clients. This is blatantly false. Hollywood is built on two things: money and relationships. A studio that screws someone over is quickly out of business because no one will do business with them again.
If you have sufficient clout, you get to see the books. If you invest sufficient money, you get to see the books. If you're anyone else, you're not in a position to care what's in the books since you get paid whether or not the films does well.
Someone poor schmuck is always gonna be one of today's unlucky 10,000 who doesn't know he's getting screwed.
Amazon's search works so much better and feels less algorithmically personalized (something which I believe is a horrible anti-feature in all of these services). And because Amazon can support letting me buy or rent content that isn't stocked in the Prime Video service, the search results are _so_ much more useful to me. Often in Netflix, I just want to know _if_ they are carrying a certain title right now or not, and don't want to be presented with alternatives that are "similar in spirit" to whatever I was searching.
I also find that the "continue watching" section on Netflix frequently does not appear as the first row, and there are all sorts of "trending" or "critically acclaimed" rows that I have to scroll through to get back up to the "continue watching row" at the top. While on Amazon, this section is always at the top, and automatically updates with shows that have released a new episode since the last time I signed in.
Netflix already feels like an outdated brand to me, like it's the cheap way of doing a streaming platform. I get it that network-specific apps like NBCSN sports apps and HBO Go, etc., these probably will suck because it's a network that is probably utterly incompetent at investing in technology.
But Netflix really disappoints me. I think in the long run, Netflix will not be remembered as fondly as it is now, though we all benefit from the huge bidding war on talent creating great shows.
It's like not having the light in your fridge go on when you open the door. It's not important for the actual purpose of the thing but it is something one has come to expect.
Same. I rarely if ever watch Netflix on anything other than my laptop.
Hi, I'm mindcrime. Now you know somebody who watches Netflix on a device with a spacebar.
The point was that someone replied originally by saying the need for space bar to pause a video trumped everything else, and my goal was to emphasize how there might be _utterly gigantic_ subpopulations of streaming service customers for whom such a feature would literally never be relevant. So that perhaps it's not a useful feature by which to judge the overall quality of different providers, even if you happen to be one of the rare people who really relies on it.
Talk about cheaply done streaming -- apparently sticking a retail UI meant for shopping for chairs and peanut butter on top of videos is premium to you?
I would say I have a very generic use case of these services:
- I want to rent / buy content when it’s not part of what’s already in the streaming service.
- I don’t want algorithmically personalized results. I want “exact search” to always work.
- I want the top panel area when I log in to always have the content I’ve been actively watching, so that the easiest thing to do is to resume.
The video player, connectivity, lack of bugs, subtitles, non-Western content, ability to directly integrate premium add ons, etc., are all just superior to Netflix.
Netflix literally has one advantage: some of its original shows are good enough that I still want to watch them despite the Netflix app environment being unpleasant to use. I wish I could do even that through Amazon.
I know that scrolling up instead of down will get you to 'My List' very quickly, and I believe 'Continue Watching' is there too, but I cannot confirm while I'm at work. I almost never scroll down anymore (unless I do so subconsciously).
As far as the interfaces for selecting what to watch, in my opinion they are equally bad. I no longer use them to discover content. Instead I find something I want to watch elsewhere and search for it directly.
Prime is good while watching. For finding content Netflix is superior IMHO. The recommendation algorithm is better, plus the search is better. Amazon Prime treats seasons as distinct entities - so you need to manually add each available season of a show.
Their algorithms heavily favor their own original content, and they clearly have stopped giving a shit about movies in general, and focus almost entirely on whatever latest and greatest darling shows they produce.
Very sincerely, the information retrieval experience of Amazon is the main thing that makes Amazon significantly superior, instead of just being a little better on small touches.
I should also point out that I pretty much hate Amazon as a company, and frankly it pains me to admit all this, but very truly they are running circles around Netflix with their streaming service.
- skip the intros in 1 click
- access any episode of the season you're watching from the player
- see which episodes I already watched from the player
- have a summary of the previous episodes from the player
- english subtitles outside of the US on every Netflix shows
- i also think the search algorithm is better
I'm nearing a year as a Netflix user, yet I still have no idea how that list is sorted. It's not sorted by last added, last updated, recently watched, alphabetic or any other method that I can make any sense of. There is no button to change the sorting method.
Of course, this list is also re-sorted very often, so I simply have to look around and find where they placed my favorite show today in a list of 50~ items, while trying to have a breakfast.
I'm also very surprised that X-ray does not hi-lite items on the screen that you could click to buy on Amazon (I assume someone is working on this), not saying I want it, just surprised the feature doesn't exist.
I do hope this is the case but I'm not convinced. Netflix's approach atm seems very strongly geared towards the middlebrow, which is perhaps the area their algorithms perform best. It's probably not very economical for them to target someone like me when there's still droves of people watching network TV.
I'm not totally sold on the Deuce but it feels like far more of a prestige product than anything I've seen on Netflix. When someone signs with HBO, they know they're gonna be given the opportunity to develop with top notch people whilst retaining control within a proven system. Whereas Netflix seem to be exclusively focusing on throwing money at the problem. For example, Netflix have made several attempts at a cool 30-minute dramedy type deals, absolutely none of them come close to something like Insecure in overall quality. The most noteworthy one (Master of None) has some bizarrely stiff writing at points that would've been helped hugely if Ansari had been paired up with some experienced writers.
Netflix don't do themselves any favours with the notion that things will get lost in the pile. A director selling anything that hasn't a sizeable and obvious audience tends to get absolutely buried on their platform (e.g. Noah Baumbach's last film's only publicity seemed to be the references made to it following Dustin Hoffman's sexual harassment allegations)
Has anyone watched the Norwegian original? Is it better or worse?
I assume the Norwegian writing is not influenced by an algorithm?
Having Emma Stone in a TV series should feel like a much bigger deal than that show does.
It would take longer to read his memo out loud than to watch the movie.
Also, like a lot of character dramas, the most direct "about" is your investment in what happens to/between the characters. But I think you could fairly say the show is an exploration of how we come to grips with limited control over our minds and emotions.
The Leftovers was basically Lost done right, very very clear from the onset that it's about people's reactions to the craziness than the underlying reasons for it. Maniac feels like it has some unnecessary stuff tacked on, the premise has a Charlie Kaufman copycat element to it all that feels like a necessary gimmick as opposed to something which naturally fits into the world.
I'm fascinated by the lukewarm response this show's received. It feels so refreshing to have a show a) tell you what it's going to do and then b) do it. It spends the first three episodes establishing the characters and the conceit, and then follows through on everything a narrative is supposed to follow through on.
Every major character has a "core trauma" that they must confront and move past. They ingest pills which put them into dreamlike states where they can fuse their trauma with mythological encounters, which lets them face their problems head on in a more abstract sense. Just about to the letter how Joseph Campbell explained the purpose of myths and legends.
Even the non-dreaming characters face larger-than-life scenarios they must overcome in order to overcome their own core problems. Without spoiling it, Dr. Mantleray (Justin Theroux) has a hilarious and way over the top problem that he confronts in an equally ridiculous manner.
Which reminds me of another facet of this show: it's not afraid to let you (or make you) laugh. Unlike Bojack's Flip McVicker, who says before his premier, "This show contains no intentional humor."
It's a tonic for people tired of Prestige TV. The "it gets good" syndrome, where we have to wait a whole season for any kind of "payoff" to hours of wheel-spinning, setup, and dissolution. I'm tired of mysterious characters doing weird things and waiting eight episodes to find out why. Plot is not a puzzle. I want to know the characters, to care about them, to know in clear terms what they want and watch them struggle to achieve that. Which, I think, Maniac delivers on.
It seems to me that Netflix specialises in 7/10 shows. Solid and fairly forgettable productions.
I spend 5-7 hours a week watching TV shows and I find I have zero use for Netflix. It has almost that I want to watch if my goal is to watch the best thing I can find for an hour a day.
At least I have the option of fast forward, though more likely I’ll just stop watching everything except the most highly acclaimed stuff. And/or I’m getting older and just not entertained as much by it anymore.
In case anyone hasn't seen it, here's an eye-opening post from someone at the British Film Institite, explaining the rediculous lengths they had to go to just to do a screening of Kathryn Bigelow's "Point Break"
https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/com...
(and the follow up when they eventually managed to get rights to show the movie)
https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/fea...
RE: Netflix US, if this site is accurate the US is actually worse than the UK for films from the 1950s https://unogs.com/?q=-!1950,1962-!0,5-!0,10-!0,10-!Any-!Any-...
In my experience, Netflix series with only 8-10 episodes seem to have much less of this than the 22-23 episode seasons the networks churn out.
The Marvel based shows Netflix produces just wants to capitalize on the success of the movies, but they couldn't secure the right to top tier super heros and they're struck with charters that can't carry multiple seasons.
Think of the first season like a start up. You have a creator/founder that has a passion project/idea/concept, but can't get in front of the right people to make it happen, yet. They keep pitching it, getting feedback, re-working the original concept through many iterations (could be years). Then one day they meet the right investor/producer/etc with a much more fully edited/revised product and plenty of practice pitching. The original product gets made to great fanfare, and suddenly everyone wants version/season 2.0, but like now. Everyone forgets how long v1/s1 took to develop. Some developers/creators can already see past v1 to vX, and just hope they can keep the product viable long enough to get there.
Yay netflix!
Or maybe the battle has already been won.
It's a horrible Star Wars film.
And I'd rather they at least take some risks than continue to regurgitate the OT. If you ignore all of the nonsense from redpillers about SJWs and Kathleen Kennedy turning it into anti-male propaganda, I feel like many of the the remaining criticisms of the film, while subjectively legitimate, can be applied in general to the other films as well.
> But "a great action flick to go see if you are bored on a Saturday night" is what a Star Wars film is supposed to be.
Yes, but it's also supposed to be a continuing story. It's a serialized, epic, swashbuckling space opera. While TLJ is still a space opera, it doesn't follow the same tone and the story doesn't follow the same beats.
It's fine if you want to tell a story like TLJ about disillusionment and being disappointed with your heroes and discovering that the real world isn't about one ship destroying the Death Star. But taking that story and putting it in the Star Wars universe as a main entry in the series doesn't work. That's not what people want to see in a Star Wars movie. People go to a Star Wars movie to see the hero destroy the Death Star! You can't take any story with any characters and any plot elements and place it in the Star War Universe and magically have a Star Wars movie. It's the same reason you can't just have a movie with a Deloran and time travel and make a Back to the Future movie. It's the same reason the Ghostbusters remake was bad. It's the same reason the Mad Max remake was good. It's the same reason Infinity War was good. It's the same reason Batman v Superman was bad. You have to have some respect for the tone, themes, and plots of what came before. TLJ disrespects it's audience's desires by disrespecting the draw of the source material.
I'm reminded of that scene in the Empire Strikes Back where they destroyed a Death Star. Oh wait! They didn't. Because in the middle movie of most trilogies, bad things happen to the heroes. They fail. They reach rock bottom, and the third movie is their final struggle.
You can't take any story with any characters and any plot elements and place it in the Star War Universe and magically have a Star Wars movie.
That's exactly what they did with Rogue One. Worked very well. In contrast, Solo was done in the style of the traditional SW movies and is generally acknowledged as a failure.
It's the same reason the Mad Max remake was good...You have to have some respect for the tone, themes, and plots of what came before. TLJ disrespects it's audience's desires by disrespecting the draw of the source material.
Mad Max Fury Road was completely inconsistent, tonally and other wise, with the original Mad Max, and is a direct descendant of the campiness of Beyond Thunderdome. Batman v Superman, on the other hand, ws made with the same tones, themes, and plots as the other DC Synderverse movies, and was still quite terrible. Aliens and Alien are both considered terrific, genre-defining films. Yet Aliens has very little in common with Alien other than Ripley and the xenomorph. The same can be said of Terminator and T2. Harry Potter 3 and on have little tonally in common with the first two films, yet the third is considered one of the best in the series. Etc...
Speak for yourself... I've seen that three times already (Starkiller Base is just a really big Death Star,) I don't need to see it again.
I'm an adult fan, I do want to see a bit of depth in my space opera. I want heroes who doubt themselves and grey morality and villains I can sympathize with, at least a little, if not agree with. You can have swashbuckling and sturm und drang, that's why it's called "space opera."
It's just a matter of taste whether or not people want the formula. I hate the prequels, but I know fans who like them, and (as much as I don't want to admit it) there are fans who consider them superior to the originals.
I can understand why some people don't like Last Jedi, but I don't think it deserves the degree of hate that it gets, and I suspect that it will be looked on more favorably in hindsight. Although that probably depends on how well Episode IX does.
The Star Wars EU was not cannon. It was glorified fan-fiction. More importantly, with Marvel there was no need to maintain historical consistency since the comics themselves were continuously rebooted and retconned over decades. With Star Wars, there is only a single continuum.
I'll never be convinced that Thrawn wouldn't have been a better storyline than this complete rehash.
Yes. The story begins after Thanos already has the gauntlet and has already used it to kill half the universe... because he has a crush on the cosmic embodiment of Death and wants to impress her.
I'm glad they didn't film that, it would have been stupid.