Netflix’s Best Move … Ever?
Plus: A streaming non-recommendation!
I’m vexed, terribly vexed, by the Entertainment Strategy Guy, who had the audacity to label Netflix’s decision to pick up WWE rights Netflix’s best strategic decision of the last five years yesterday. So I’m going to up the ante and say it might be their best decision ever. In this newsletter, we will allow neither mineshaft gaps nor hyperbole gaps.
Okay, fine, it’s arguably their best strategic decision ever, right after the decision to not only produce House of Cards but also dump the whole season on the service at once, initiating the binging craze. But the decision to spend $5 billion on WWE rights over the next ten years is a smart and strong opening strike in the next front in the streaming wars, the accumulation of sports rights. (Well, “sports entertainment” rights, but you take my point.)
There are two important, complementary things to understand here. The first is that the WWE is enormously popular around the world, from England to the Middle East. Given that Netflix is a global company, this matters: with U.S.-Canada subs more or less maxed out, room for growth will come from the rest of the world. And it’s important to note that while Netflix only picked up the domestic and international rights for the flagship show Monday Night Raw, they picked up international rights for virtually everything else: live shows, pay per views, etc. Sean McNulty explained the deal points here, but it is, I think, a really good arrangement for Netflix if you simply break it down to a cost-per-hour basis: that $500 million per year is close to a million dollars per hour of international programming. That’s cheaper than most episodes of TV; it’s way cheaper than a two-hour movie.
And, importantly, it’s something that comes out every week, multiple times a week. This is the second thing to understand. Netflix’s biggest enemy at this point is “churn,” people signing up for the service and then dropping it. When you have something people want to watch every week—remember, there is no “offseason” for the WWE—you reduce the odds that those people drop the service.
As I noted a couple of years back, sports rights are the next logical targets for streaming companies, particularly as they start leaning into advertising-based subscription models. Amazon has dipped its toe into this arena with Thursday Night Football. I think it’s fair to say that some portion of the next NBA deal will be a streaming exclusive. AppleTV+ has a deal with MLB and MLS. It’s all about to happen and when it does happen it will be the end of linear cable.
Please swing over to Across the Movie Aisle for our chat about the great Paul Giamatti. Love that guy, whether he’s playing Rhino in a comic book movie or a wine snob in Sideways or a put-upon executive in Private Parts.
Links!
This week I reviewed The Zone of Interest, about which I have … fairly complicated and almost contradictory feelings. I was both moved and annoyed by it, more so of each the further I got from the picture.
The Oscar nominations dropped this week, and we’ll be talking about them on Across the Movie Aisle. This whole section could’ve just been filled with escalatingly insane takes about the Barbie “snubs.” Much to discuss on Tuesday!
(For what it’s worth, the proper ranking of Best Picture nominees is this one: Oppenheimer >> Killers of the Flower Moon > The Holdovers > American Fiction > Past Lives > The Zone of Interest >> Anatomy of a Fall > Poor Things > Barbie > Maestro.)
Director Doug Liman is boycotting the premiere of his remake of Road House because MGM/Amazon decided to send it straight to streaming. Good for him! Movies need to be seen in theaters! One of you out there has to know Doug Liman, tell him to come on my podcast to talk about the importance of movie theaters! I swear I’ll only spend 20 minutes on Edge of Tomorrow and Swingers.
Speaking of theaters, this is interesting: Jordan Peele saw Dev Patel’s forthcoming action flick Monkey Man, thought it had a chance to break out at the box office, and arranged for the film to move from Netflix to Universal, which is going to give it a proper theatrical release.
Another smart thing Netflix did: cut down on password sharing. Shockingly, when you don’t let people steal your stuff, some of those people become new subscribers!
The Bricklayer, a VOD title to aVOiD1
I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to use this space to run titles down: there’s enough good stuff out there to discover that I don’t want to waste a lot of time warning against bad stuff. But, after seeing a handful of folks I trust recommend it, I feel compelled to note that The Bricklayer is just not very good.
In recent years, some critics have tried to rehabilitate the reputation of Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger), and while I’m always up for some quality revisionism I just don’t get it. He was, at best, serviceable, but his style of quick-cut combat just never really did much for me. Beyond that, though, The Bricklayer feels like a missed opportunity. Rather than having some fun with the script—giving star Aaron Eckhart monologues about the zen-like nature of making a level brick wall, comparing people to different grades of bricks, whatever—this is a straightforward and generic actioner about a guy who comes out of retirement and has to stop a guy from his past, etc, blah. There’s one line near the end about why he loves being a bricklayer (“because a brick’s form is its function,” or something like that). There should be dozens of lines like that. See, e.g., The Beekeeper. Have some fun with your high concept.
On top of that, there’s just so much bad CGI. Not just the fire and the explosions, but the backgrounds: using green screen rear-projection technology to mimic motion in cars is some of the worst stuff out there. I really wish studios would stop using it to save a buck.
Anyway. Avoid this one.
Still workshopping this, bear with me.
Whether it was the best decision ever is totally dependent on whether you care about WWE, which I don’t
All references to mineshaft gaps are to be commended.