Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread • Page 514

quite the opposite feeling for me hah, threw on a sparks playlist for the drive home and it ruled

i think the only thing of theirs I knew before this was the FFS album

 

I know their two disc greatest hits and enjoy it. Tried digging into full albums a few times but I think greatest hits is enough for me, so much material.

 

Just watched this doc about the cast of the movie, "Kids" and it was great.

The Kids (2021) - IMDb

It's playing online as part of the Tribeca Film Festival right now if anyone wants to check it out.

The Kids | 2021 Tribeca Festival | Tribeca

 

I've never even heard of this movie.

 

How many of those people watched 5 minutes then turned it off

 

certainly have heard of it. saw the trailer. looked like shit.

 

It is shit.

 

How many people have Netflix accounts? Some hundred million? As hard as it is to believe that 72 million people clicked on and watched The Midnight Sky front to back, if it were framed as like, 30% of Netflix users watched The Midnight Sky (or at least pressed play and watched 15 minutes) that sounds more believable.

they should be transparent about their numbers

 

they’re a business. why on earth would they be transparent about it lol. it would cost them money, directly.

 

They should be transparent because they keep promising they will be, and until they are there’s no reason to care how many people they say watched something

 

One of the important reasons they need to be transparent about their real viewership numbers is that the success or failure of a project influences the future prospects of everyone involved in the film. If you direct a box office bomb, there are usually consequences, but a big success leads to more opportunities. Without an objective criteria like box office, it gets really messy.

 

sure. i agree with that. but wouldn’t the continued relationship between these streamers and the talent imply success? why would they continue working with directors that they internally know are “failures” commercially for them?

 

It may help continue a relationship with that streaming company, but those numbers aren't available to other studios so it is harder to measure the success or failure of a filmmaker/writer/actor in the same way box office always provided.

 

It also makes it harder to justify demanding a higher salary or budget. People might know that your last Netflix film was generally a success, but if no one knows the real numbers it can be hard to command more money from FOX or Universal or whoever else you want to work with next.

 

it … does not seem like over the last five years that has been an issue for studios, at all

 

How are you measuring that?

 

i mean, the amount of stars and behind the camera talent that have hopped from studio to studio and managed to have box office successes after working with netflix before that?

mike flanagan had several netflix series that were clearly successes since he was given the chance to make the sequel to the shining, which failed at the box office. which was something netflix was comfortable enough with to let him create several different miniseries afterwards. like, it’s one example, sure, but there are many. i get it being a nebulous thing for us non-industry folks without the data but i think you’re overblowing it’s effect on those within the industry

 

A lot of you severely underestimate the lack of correlation between a movie being good and a movie being watched/successful/popular.

 

yep

 

How? One is subjective and one is objective.

 

We don't know what those opportunities would have been with or without Netflix. It isn't measurable in the way box office is.

 

we know that mike flanagan wouldn't have directed a sequel to the shining without his netflix movies. like, definitively. what an absurd take.

 

No one is saying he wouldn't have?

 

you said that external studios don’t have netflix’s internal info so it’s hard to command money/influence/etc. with those other studios. in my example, that is pretty clearly not the case, since the director was given, by far, the biggest project of his career after a string of netflix movies.

 

We don't know how those negotiations went and what the impact would have been if this person had made films with a traditional box office or shows with a traditional Nielsen rating. We don't know what the differences in budget, good or bad, would have been, we don't know how and if final cut was negotiated, we don't know how much control they had on casting, we don't know how much creative freedom they had during the production. Netflix fudging the numbers limits the power directors or actors or writers have in advocating for themselves and their work. Just pointing to a finished product is pointless because we have no measurable way of knowing how those talks broke down.

However, a positive of being on a streaming service is that there is less responsibility for bombing.