2023-05-01 14:55:11
EActually, New York novelist Laura Dave should be in high spirits. After all, Apple+ has turned their bestseller “Protect Her” into a miniseries. Dave served as executive producer with her husband, Josh Singer. But despite all the good mood, she knows that this is not something that can be taken for granted: “So many people in the industry have said to me: It’s not usually that easy. Dont be pleased to early.”
Because the times when streaming services pounded one project after the other out of the ground with full pockets are obviously over. While previously only restarts made the headlines, the motto is now “cancellation”. Netflix, for example, dropped more than 20 series in 2022, such as the German “1899” or “Uncoupled” with stars like Neil Patrick Harris, which was announced with great fanfare. Warner was particularly rigid with its HBO Max offer, where 35 projects, including such hyped series as “Westworld”, have been eliminated in recent months. “Cancellations are really hip now,” wrote the magazine “Vulture”.
The new goods, on the other hand, are becoming scarce. Streamers are forecast to spend $26.5 billion on the program in 2023 – still up 14 percent year-on-year, but not comparable to the 45 percent increase between 2021 and 2022, an analyst at media research firm Ampere writes a “more cautious approach” by streamers as they “adapt to an increasingly competitive market.” Influential Wall Street analysts at MoffetNathanson put it harder: “Investors and executives have accepted that streaming is no longer a good business — at least not compared to before.”
To make the company’s spending situation clear, it’s worth taking a look at Disney, which operates Disney+, which is in the red. In the second quarter of 2022, the entertainment empire made losses in this segment of 887 million dollars, in the third 1.1 billion, and in the fourth the mouse group made a proud 1.5 billion misery. After all, that should remain the negative peak, the managers comforted Wall Street, from which the money comes. Which did not prevent the board of directors from taking drastic measures. CEO Bob Chapek was fired and replaced by his predecessor Bob Iger. Around 7,000 jobs are to be lost throughout the company.
Caution has also returned to Netflix. Last year, the workforce was encouraged to “spend our shareholders’ money wisely.” The mandate to release a new film every week no longer applies. Longtime film production executive Lisa Nishimura resigned in late March, prompting industry publication The Hollywood Reporter to comment, “Netflix has officially entered the age of thrift.”
The figures for the first quarter of 2023, which are unanimously disappointing in the opinion of the industry, are likely to accelerate these processes. At just under 1.75 million, the increase in new customers was below the expectations of 2.1 million. Net income was $1.3 billion, down more than 20 percent from the same period last year.
What exactly does that mean for creatives? One finds pragmatic optimism among the lucky ones who are still allowed to launch formats. “It has always been difficult to make series and it will continue to be so,” says showrunner Anna Winger, whose multi-part series “Transatlantic” recently premiered on Netflix. She is less interested in the strategy of her streaming partners: “I don’t think much about it.” So far, however, she has not been threatened by the danger of serial death at Netflix because she only ever created miniseries like “Unorthodox”, for which no second season was planned.
Maybe a sensible solution. Because the sword of Damocles, which now hovers over all projects for everyone to see, also influences user habits. According to a YouGov survey, 46 percent of all American streaming viewers wait to see whether a series gets the intended finale before even accessing it. Who wants to get involved in a world that suddenly gets unplugged?
Cory Michael Smith (Mitte) als Varian Fry in “Transatlantic”
Quelle: ©Anika Molnar/Courtesy Netflix ©2023
The new austerity policy is also exacerbating conflicts within the industry. This applies in particular to the negotiations with the American authors’ union WGA, which is threatening to go on strike at the beginning of May. Because the majority of writers earn less money with the streamers than with conventional television stations. While the latter continue to sell their formats in license sales in which the authors are involved, the streamers are not very interested. One of the sticking points of the negotiations are the changed conditions in the development of new series, which means that authors are paid even less than before.
Who can a German vampire suck dry?
As if the situation wasn’t complicated enough, there is also political pressure. Lawmakers around the world are in the process of imposing new policies and taxes on streamers with the aim of treating them like regular national TV channels. The EU, for example, wants to use its Audiovisual Media Services Directive to fill its platforms with at least 30 percent European productions. A Netflix may achieve this quota, but does not want to be dictated to. Amazon or Disney+, on the other hand, basically have some catching up to do when it comes to local content.
One aspect of these upheavals, which has a special impact on creative work, is the new political correctness, which has a massive impact on cast and screenplay issues. The German actor Oliver Masucci experienced this while filming the Netflix vampire film “Day Shift”: “In one scene I sucked dry a Korean. But by the time I got to the reshoots, the Woke guys had replaced the Korean actor with a tattooed white gun dealer, because as a German vampire you can’t suck off a Korean vampire tooth dealer. My beautiful scene was played by a woman to make her role bigger. Ultimately, it’s schizophrenic, because it discriminates against an Asian actor on the scene, just so as not to annoy a woke minority hanging around on Twitter. And the corporations want to make money.”
In any case, the question is what kind of films are actually still being implemented by the streamers. For a long time, these were the starting point for smaller independent productions for which a theatrical release made no sense. But Netflix, for example, is now more focused on major productions in the style of the $200 million action spectacle Gray Man. The streamers, which previously seemed to offer a niche for more sophisticated material, are ultimately emulating the studios’ blockbuster strategy.
Just don’t expect anything unusual from the viewers
Other genres have to be content with lower budgets if they are realized at all. Director Nancy Meyers, for example, who wanted to film her romantic comedy “Paris Paramount” with stars like Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz, could not agree on her desired budget of 150 million dollars with Netflix and had to give up. Prestige projects tend to only be realized if there are hopes of major awards – this is also an analogy to the old Hollywood strategy.
It is doubtful whether innovative original series such as “Orange Is the New Black” or “House of Cards”, with which Netflix first gained its status, will still have a chance in the future. The streaming success “Wednesday” was based on an established brand – the “Addams Family”. It fits with this trend what the director David Wnendt (with “Sonne und Beton” in the cinema right now) reports in WELT. After a while, Netflix understood which formats worked and then tried to copy these successes with internal training and dramaturgy seminars: just don’t expect anything unusual from the viewers.
In general, the boundaries between streamers and the cinema landscape seem to be blurring. The latter has started to flourish again after the drought years of the pandemic. Thanks to films like “John Wick 4”, US movie theaters were able to enjoy a growth rate of 37 percent in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first three months of 2022 – and a smooth 589 percent compared to the same period in 2021. Roth analyst Eric Handler Capital Partners says, “Studios have recognized that an exclusive theatrical release is the best way to maximize profits.”
Exclusively in cinemas in November: the Apple+ production “Napoleon”
Quelle: KEVIN BAKER/Courtesy of Apple
In other words, streaming is no longer the holy grail. And with the exception of Netflix, streamers themselves are now following this wisdom, increasingly relying on major theatrical releases before playing the films on their platforms. In the US, Ben Affleck’s Amazon production “Air” launched on 3,000 screens and grossed over 20 million in its first five days – a respectable number for a film of this type Flower Moon” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” to the screens. The acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is also increasingly paying off for Amazon – as can be seen from the successful theatrical release of “Creed III”, which was heavily advertised on the online mail order company’s platforms.
The big, wild playground of the streamers, on which the creative community hoped to let off steam, is obviously being trimmed by the laws of the market – by those laws that have already taught the cinema industry the credo “profitability instead of creativity”. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that even detailed analyzes of online viewer behavior cannot guarantee success. Apparently, the classic adage of famed screenwriter William Goldman still applies: “Nobody has a clue — not a single person in the entire movie business knows for sure what’s going to work.”
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