Behind Netflix Film Chief’s Exit —And What It Means for Streaming Movies

January 25, 2024 10:32 PM

Under Scott Stuber, the streaming giant spent lavishly on original movies, but insiders point to the Bela Bajaria-run TV unit as the future: "Middle of the road programming." Netflix has spent lavishly on original movies, and the results have not been dazzling. Stuber has made no secret of his view that maintaining quality control was impossible given the crushing volume of movies that Netflix insisted on rolling out. The streamer put out 90 original movies in 2018, with Stuber overseeing most of them. Since then the company has steadily dialed back the number of originals: 85 in 2022 and 49 last year, when the company restructured the film division and made a handful of layoffs. Still, this year Netflix will release at least 36 original English-language films — far more than any other company.
posted by folklore724 (26 comments total)

To put the mind numbing amount of effort that slate is - the Hollywood bigs (Disney/WB/Universal, etc) usually release ~10-20 movies into theaters every year.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:27 PM on January 25 [6 favorites]

The context I reached for to think about this news was a Letterboxd list of all 816(???) Netflix original movies, sorted by rating and sorted by popularity. Looks like about 300 are rated >= 3.0 out of 5.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:31 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

One of the ongoing problems for Netflix is that their terrible stuff never goes away. The film adaptation of death note, for instance, is always sitting there at the bottom of search.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:45 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll use this as an excuse to raise prices again. I'm still bitter that their WWE deal, which I will never watch, is going to raise the prices across the board. Put sports on its own pay tier and leave me out of it.

/derail
posted by Servo5678 at 5:11 AM on January 26 [11 favorites]

I'm sure they'll use this as an excuse to raise prices again.

They’ve just recently floated the possibility/probability of rate increases again this year. That, and they’re killing off the basic ad-free tier.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:06 AM on January 26

My wife and I cancelled over a year ago and there has been maybe ONE thing I've bothered to try and pirate (and then I just shrugged and gave up). Dozens of movies, countless series, nothing I was motivated to watch illegally or go back to netflix for.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:52 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

I’ve never understood why they insist on labeling everything they import to the US as “Netflix Original”. Like, straight up BBC productions get slapped with their production logo. Obviously some sort of branding strategy but it seems risky to muddle everything together, especially if they’re slowly tanking that production moniker with straight up garbage that’s *actually* a Netflix production.
posted by rh at 8:09 AM on January 26 [4 favorites]

. “Middle-of-the-road programming — that’s what Bela arguably knows,” he says. “That’s where they think they want to go: lowest common denominator, broad filmmaking. The number of high-end filmmakers taking projects there will wane.”

Sooo... that means Netflix is going to get even shittier? My only excuse to keep the subscription is the fact that my kids find Netflix UI easier to navigate than cable, so I don't have to get up early to set up the cartoons.
posted by gakiko at 8:30 AM on January 26 [3 favorites]

Honestly they could simply have moved their DVD catalog onto streaming and been done with it. It probably would have been far cheaper and attracted way more subscribers.

(I'm one of those people who still was getting DVDs from them until they cancelled that service.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:45 AM on January 26 [4 favorites]

Honestly they could simply have moved their DVD catalog onto streaming and been done with it. It probably would have been far cheaper

Not even remotely cheaper; the license for streaming a movie or show is a completely different license than the license for renting a DVD. They're not transferable.

Netflix originally had zillions of streaming licenses because studios had priced them at basically nothing; that was why Netflix was so popular when they debuted their streaming service! They had everything! And then studios realized the licenses were valuable, so when it came time to renew, they priced them up significantly. That was the entire reason Netflix started making original content in the first place; no license fees meant a perpetual library of stuff they could point to and say "hey subscribers look what we got."
posted by mightygodking at 10:24 AM on January 26 [6 favorites]

We're finally turning a bit of a corner on the licensing thing, I think. All of the studios that jumped into creating their own streaming channels (because hey "we own the IP, we should be owning the pipeline too to maximize profits!") - now they've discovered that it's expensive to maintain a pipeline and acquire/retain customers - hence different app mergers, affiliate subs via device ecosystems like Roku, Amazon Fire, etc.

But yeah, the game went:

• Netflix moves into streaming
• Customers dig it because Netflix library is vast because the licenses were cheap and the service is convenient
• Studios/Content Providers raise carriage rates or cutoff Netflix
• Netflix responds by licensing global content and cranking out original shows/movies to mixed results with a big damn spend
• Biz people decide that owning their own app is the way to maximize profits/awareness and finish cutoffing Netflix
• Market fragments, customers get frustrated, everyone starts to figure out that pipes and reasonably functional apps cost $$
• Content providers start consolidating or cutting license deals again, because the margins are more secure
• Profit??

And in the meanwhile, for the studio business, booming productions (until now) were a bonus to the creators, casts and writers. The theaters only get massive tent poles due to market globalization and everything "midmarket" like romcoms, etc have all moved to streaming.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:46 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Content providers start consolidating or cutting license deals again, because the margins are more secure

And we see this happening in the recent announcement of HBO content being piped over Hulu's servers. Note that Hulu content isn't going to appear in the HBO app, just the other way around. This is feeding a prediction that it's going to be UI that wins out, and content providers will make deals on that premise. I bet HBO is losing much more in paying developers than it is to too-low licensing rates. Of course these deals will probably be exclusives, so the future gets pushed back once again. Streaming services charging $10 for their specialist content will eventually have to find an existing subscriber base, tantamount to a distributor, continuing the ossified 20th century tropes of capitalism (which is where all the gray hairs got their educations).
posted by rhizome at 12:07 PM on January 26

…recent announcement of HBO content being piped over Hulu's servers. Note that Hulu content isn't going to appear in the HBO app, just the other way around.

Wait. But, Hulu is now on Disney+. Does that mean HBO shows via the mouse?
posted by Thorzdad at 12:48 PM on January 26

In a way. I think we're headed for a space when's there's a couple of big content aggregators - like Netflix, Max, Disney/Hulu, Amazon and Apple. (Then you have legacy providers like my company trying to pivot to be Hulu-esque)

Turns out - we're back to creating pay tv provider spaces with more weird boundaries than before. Folks wanted ala carte until it bit them in the butt.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:11 PM on January 26

• Market fragments, customers get frustrated, everyone starts to figure out that pipes and reasonably functional apps cost $$
• Content providers start consolidating or cutting license deals again, because the margins are more secure
• Profit??
• "pirate bay" search frequency shows a sharp, unexplained rise.

posted by signal at 2:41 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]

"pirate bay" search frequency shows a sharp, unexplained rise.

Yup - I made my feelings very clear on that front a few days ago. Until they resolve this fragmentation, they're totally losing a number of folks to the high seas because they've made the "legal effort expenditure" too high for the price.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:57 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

If these offerings are sub par and overpriced, why pirate? Are watercooler discussions still that frequent/important?
posted by Selena777 at 4:22 PM on January 26

Why not pirate?
posted by signal at 4:53 PM on January 26

Unnecessary effort.
posted by Selena777 at 4:58 PM on January 26

Because piracy is free, and changes the calculation of whether to pay for Netflix? For some people, it's low effort and more necessary then paying ~17 bucks a month.
posted by sagc at 5:01 PM on January 26

Like, pirate because they're overpriced, and suddenly the cost/value ratio changes!
posted by sagc at 5:02 PM on January 26

One interesting phenomenon I noticed as our current Streaming Wars^TM have been unfolding is consumers' surprise that prices are increasing. It seems that some people assumed that somehow all of this jockeying for position and realignment among the studios and streamers would lead to lower prices. I'm not 100% sure where this sentiment comes from, but I've definitely seen it expressed by more than a few people.
posted by mhum at 5:19 PM on January 26

Pirating a tv show takes about 1 minute, and most of that is passively waiting for it to download. How is that any kind of effort?
posted by signal at 5:49 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Frankly I do both streaming and downloading, but if $16/mo becomes the lowest NFLX plan I'll have to start thinking about alternatives. I have Rokus everywhere now and their UI isn't super annoying, so I may have already solved that problem.

It seems that some people assumed that somehow all of this jockeying for position and realignment among the studios and streamers would lead to lower prices.

It's a natural result from the way capitalists speak out of both sides of their mouths about, well...any kind of change. Consolidation, good for the consumer! Raising prices, good for the consumer! Getting into a contractual spat with a content provider such that you're unable to access its content for months, good for the consumer! Stopping carrying some entire category or provider of content, good for the consumer! It's all lies they tell so that they'll be allowed to do whatever they want. The last thing any of the executives want is to engage in anything that isn't "business as usual."
posted by rhizome at 5:58 PM on January 26

I'm not 100% sure where this sentiment comes from, but I've definitely seen it expressed by more than a few people.

Most people assume that corporations have to be profitable as a general rule. They have no idea, for example, that rideshare companies aren't profitable because why wouldn't they be, who would keep giving an unprofitable company money?

The idea that streaming services could be loss-leaders intended to snatch up market share and then inflate prices once choice vanishes is generally an exotic one to the average joe.
posted by mightygodking at 6:31 PM on January 26 [2 favorites]

The idea that streaming services could be loss-leaders intended to snatch up market share and then inflate prices once choice vanishes is generally an exotic one to the average joe.

Granted some folks weren't around then, but otherwise you'd think they'd remember when Blockbuster Video undercut their Ma & Pa competitors until the latter went out of business, then literally doubled their prices once they were the only game in time. (I know, short memories etc)
posted by gtrwolf at 11:56 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]