Ask HN: Why not have Netflix users vote on which movies/shows to green-light? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why not have Netflix users vote on which movies/shows to green-light?

7 pointsamichail17 comments

And of course, you could weigh votes more from Netflix users with strong track records of predicting hits.

One phrase I see missing from all the Netflix convo is "tent pole," and it is the basis of the entire movie business. One or two films a year will hold up an entire studio like a tent pole while the rest of their films lose money.

Why not only make tent poles? Well, they try, which is how we get endless superhero movies.

Why not just make up a new tent pole? Because no one can figure out in advance what they are. No one in Hollywood seems to be able to, ever. Look how many "sleeper" hits were considered unimportant, and how many big budget, highly promoted films fail.

Hollywood doesn't know what's a hit until after it's made, and neither does the viewing public. Great art with lasting value can't be crowd-sourced.

> Great art with lasting value can't be crowd-sourced.

This is a nice problem to solve! And profitable too if it works.

I don't think the initial script / idea is a good indication of where a movie / show is going. A lot more of it has to do with investment into locations, sets, props, technology used to shoot it, skill of crew and director, actors, editing.

I'm reminded of the movie "In Time". The premise/concept was amazing (time as a currency) but the execution/movie sucked.

Voting will almost always give terrible results in anything that requires expertise and craft. It's the reason why elected politicians don't do anything important themselves. They appoint people with relevant expertise and experience to do each job.

Voting on which shows to greenlight will probably select for the flashiest pitches/trailers, without any effect on the resultant quality.

Hit shows are hard to make. Seinfeld was considered a dud at the start. The same situation with MASH. Had they been judged by the public initially they would have never been green lighted. A show needs to find it's audience and the writers and actors need to find their groove. It's very hard to do it from the start. Also what seems like a great show from the pilot might be a one time hit and go downhill from there.

Also, generally speaking people don't know what they(we) want. It's hard to like something you've never seen. New shows are full of new stuff so how can the public make a good evaluation after a 1/2 hour or even a full hour.

The other problem is that people frequently tend to vote for one thing, but then actually watch something else. There's a low correlation factor between the vote and what they actually end up watching.

Prime Video did this in the early days. They made a bunch of pilots and let people vote to know which ones needed to be a full show.

I don’t know why they stopped doing it.

Because the shows were universally terrible.

No they weren't.

The Man in the High Castle, Transparent, The Tick, etc..

I mean, they're not exactly great. But decent enough and no worse than some of the filler Netflix put out.

This is already the case in a way, X show was more viewed than Y, make more shows similar of X.

You will also end up with less ground breaking shows and more mundane stuff which is already the problem at Netflix.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

This would end up with more shows like Bright and less like Squid Game.

Because then you would have shows made for fans, and not shows made for woke HR departments.

You mad bro?

Squid games is for work HR departments? I must have missed some subtext.

No, it’s a Korean show with great characters and great writers focused on telling a story.

Not focused on scoring points by using ethnicities as a prop.

> great characters

Squid Game had some of the worst characters going. Very one dimensional and in some cases were just awful stereotypes.

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