(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.)
Often, I read articles by other pundits—writing about politics, business or culture; left, right and center—complaining about other people’s epistemological and methodological flaws. I’m sure I’ve written a few of these articles as well, but they always feel a bit too haughty.
Whatever logical fallacy someone else makes, you’re probably making it too. Sometimes within that same article!
There’s one particular community out there (to which I’d like to say I mostly agree with their philosophy/epistemology) that focuses almost exclusively on thinking better. Yet on two subjects, they offer none of the criticisms, skepticism or searing analysis that they do for everything else. Those two topics just sort of get a pass. Which is weird!
But again, do I do the same thing?
So today, in the latest edition of “What I got Right, What I Got Wrong”, I focused on the “wrong” part of the equation. I’m not taking it easy on myself today. I want to build trust with you, the reader, not just by sharing what predictions or arguments that I made that came true, but by also owning up to what I got wrong. Transparency is the best disinfectant, and you have to learn from your mistakes.
I’m looking at a Disney+ show that should have labeled as the flop of the year, questions about one of Apple TV’s biggest flops’ budget, Hulu’s Love Story, Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors, Netflix’s “Will they, won’t they?” with theaters, re-hitting my take on what’s wrong with streaming (namely, DVD money), and a whole lot more…
Let’s dive right in, starting with a huge correction…
(Heads up: if you’re a long time reader—or have just been reading me since last July—you may think, “Hey, what about the success of Obsession, Backrooms and The Amazing Digital Circus? Don’t those films hit on more than a few of the topics you’ve written about, namely horror films, A24, YouTube stars, blockbuster franchises, IP versus originals, Blumhouse, the state of theaters, and more?” You’re damn right they do. But that’s worthy of an article in and of itself—the most data-focused/nuanced take you’ll read—and I’m already writing it! That will be Part II, coming later this week.)
WRONG! KPop Demon Hunters didn’t actually beat Encanto in America…
Listen, data is hard. A few weeks ago, I dubbed KPop Demon Hunters the king of streaming films according to total hours on Nielsen’s weekly top ten streaming film charts. Well, reviewing that data set a few weeks ago, this happened…
Unfortunately, I double counted a few repeat weeks in my dataset, which means that Encanto maintains a fairly large lead over KPop Demon Hunters. In a couple of weeks, we’ll have one year of data for KPop Demon Hunters, but it’s very unlikely that it bests Encanto in the “first year” time frame.
To be clear, this is just an argument about streaming records, and doesn’t change the fact that KPop Demon Hunters is a massive, massive hit and one of the only streaming films to become a cultural phenomenon ever.
Since KPop Demon Hunters is now bouncing on and off the film charts, it may pass Encanto in the future, but it seems way, way less likely. To be continued…
WRONG: Daredevil: Born Again should have been a “Miss of the Year” contender. And did Chief of War actually cost $340 million?
In my recap of the year, I defined a TV show “miss of the year” as “shows that maybe had some viewership, but not enough, especially for the budget.” Well, thinking about it later, I’m not sure why I left Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again out of that category, as it fits that definition “to a D”. It made the Luminate Top Ten charts, but not nearly long enough to justify its budget, especially based on the IP. That show was a “Miss of the Year” for sure.
Related, on social media, I called out Wonder Man as the lowest performing Disney+ MCU Original, but as Josh Matthews of StreamScoop noted, Daredevil: Born Again’s first and second seasons missed the Nielsen top ten altogether.
Also in my misses of the year discussion, I gave my “Bomb of the Year” to Chief of War, mentioning its reported $340 million budget. Well, a new Substack—FilmFOIA—is diving into the financials behind films and TV shows, using publicly available tax credit data, and the author emailed me to say that he doesn’t think Chief of War cost that much. The New Zealand Herald article, which originally made the claim, has since retracted that assertion. He estimates, at most, $20 million per episode, though I probably think they went a bit higher than that. But we don’t know for sure either way. I appreciate that FilmFOIA acknowledges that these are “estimates”, as even the tax credits information can leave out a lot of potential spending. But his approach is a lot more grounded than leaks to the press.
Re-looking at the nominees for “Bomb of the Year”, well, it’s probably still Chief of War, only now it’s tied with other expensive Apple TV shows like Invasion. I look forward to FilmFOIA’s deep dive into Apple TV shows, which he says is coming soon.
WRONG: Love Story is Not a Miss! Neither is Your Friends & Neighbors!
Related to the above, props go to Hulu’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. It missed the charts, at first, so I gave it “Miss of the Week” win, but it wound up making both Samba TV for three weeks—which is great— and Luminate charts for two…so that’s not a miss! At all. Now, I’m not sure it’s much of a “hit” either, but it did fine at worst.
Same goes for Jon Hamm’s and Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors second season, which has been a mainstay of the Luminate and Samba TV charts, and even made the Nielsen charts for two weeks so far. Is it a huge hit? No. Is it a huge miss? Absolutely not. It’s a hit for Apple, so not a “miss” anymore.
WRONG: Netflix is NOT headed to theaters. They’re being serious this time. Is Prime Video next?
Last month, I celebrated Netflix’s choice to finally send a film to theaters, Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia film, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, laying out the possible options for Netflix’s theatrical future: fully committing to theaters, just doing big event films, or something in between. And then Netflix announced that they’re moving David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth—a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel—into that now vacated November slot.
It sure looks like Netflix is headed to putting five to six “event” films in theaters each year!
Well, Netflix wants you to know, no, they’re not. And they’re serious this time! As Dan Lin told The New York Times, “There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical. Those are filmmakers that we’ve accepted we just won’t work with.”
Yeah, color me skeptical on that one, for all the reasons I outlined in the first article. Or, more precisely, I’m mixed. I think many people at Netflix understand the logic of sending films to theaters, and many others are holding firm with prior beliefs about theaters being an outdated medium. Dan Lin’s testimony isn’t unbiased, either, since if Dan Lin, a department head at Netflix, told the New York Times, “By the way, my boss is an idiot for his beliefs about movie theaters” that would be the fast track to the unemployment line.
In this case, I’m guessing that Dan Lin is preempting all the filmmakers working with Netflix to not ask them about theatrical releases, thank you very much. Like Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington, who had a film with Netflix, based on the ancient general Hannibal, which was in pre-production, but has now been paused over budget concerns. Was this film paused because Fuqua and Denzel wanted a theatrical release? Or does Netflix believe that big budget films (like The Electric State or Wake Up Deadman or Rebel Moon or The Irishman) don’t really pencil out without theatrical dollars?
I should add: this is a pretty severe flip-flop after Netflix spent so much time from November to February trying to convince everyone in town that they would send their films to theaters.
Even worse, Prime Video might be changing course as well, which I should have mentioned in that article. Prime Video’s Voltron film is headed straight-to-streaming next year. Based on the IP—1980s TV/toys—and its similarity to a recent box office bomb, namely Masters of the Universe (also based on 1980s toys/TV), this isn’t too surprising. (I hadn’t caught this before I wrote my previous article.) It’s still disappointing, and a sign that Amazon may still fear bad publicity more than having big (but rare) theatrical wins.
RIGHT: Back in the day, DVD sales were huge
Last Streaming Ratings Report, two romcoms made the charts: Pretty Woman and The Proposal, a romcom I don’t even remember, but starring two A-Listers: Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock.
My editor/researcher compiled these fun/depressing facts:
- The Proposal made $163 million in the US and $314 million globally. It also sold $114 million in DVDs/home entertainment. $114 million!!!! Off of a $40 million budget. That’s Backrooms-level money right there!
- Pretty Woman made $178 million domestically (in 1990!) and $432 million globally.
I haven’t made this point in a while, but it bears repeating: it can’t be overstated how much the industry relied on home entertainment sales to boost total revenue and hence profit, which allowed studios to take more swings and make more movies overall. I couldn’t find Pretty Woman’s home video sales, but we can assume it was huge if The Proposal did $114 million.
It was always obvious that the economics of streaming (condensing five or six sources or revenue down to one, a monthly subscription plan) wouldn’t make as much as before, despite protestations around 2019 of the opposite take.
I wish more of the pro-technology, pro-futurism pundits had made this point: streaming is “the future” but that future will be much worse in many ways, especially in terms of revenue.
A few other stray thoughts on these two films.
- Romcoms have a reputation for “not working” globally, but those two films, at least, did play internationally.
- Both films had terrible reviews from critics. Pretty Woman has a 51 on Metacritic, and The Proposal has a 48. So yeah, for all the “films need to be better” pundits out there, historically, critical reviews (as a proxy for quality) didn’t matter. Or critics were wrong at the time.
- Both of these films come from 20th Century Fox, so again, this is Disney quietly licensing their films out to a competitor.
Smaller Updates
- CORRECTION: Grey’s Anatomy had two spinoffs. I mentioned this in my “Renewals and Cancellations” update, but I like repeating corrections like this. Grey’s Anatomy already had two spinoffs, Private Practice and Station 19, and thanks to Brandon Katz for catching the goof.
- RIGHT: Baseball is really popular! After the World Series put up big numbers last fall, the World Baseball Classic put up big, big viewership numbers. Sunday Night baseball on NBC has been averaging 2.2 million viewers…and NBC is paying a fraction of what they pay the NBA for sports rights. Again, baseball is popular!
- RIGHT: Regional Sports Networks keep dying (and thus their rights fees are shrinking). The Milwaukee Brewers took a $20 million hit after losing their RSN. Related, the Detroit Pistons are moving their games back to broadcast channels. I’ve been worried about local sports rights and their impact on non-NFL sports leagues for a while now.
- WRONG: The video game industry is growing at 6 to 7% a year. Doug Creutz of TD Cowan pushed back on my line about video games being out of growth opportunities, noting that the industry grows at 6 to 7% per year. Though I stand by my take on hype—read this article for more— this is terrific context.
- RIGHT: Doctor Who continues to struggle. I’ve called out Doctor Who as a big miss for Disney+ in the past, and recent reports say that the show may not come back for years! Again, the Disney+ money may have been great in the short term, but long term, it covered up major issues facing the series.
- OMISSION: Prime Video is Cutting Back on Big Swings…Like Stargate. In the last Streaming Ratings Report, I asked, “Is Prime Video’s big Swing Era” over? And I failed to mention that Prime Video un-ordered a reboot of Stargate! I mentioned this at the bottom of my latest “Renewals, Cancellations and Un-orders” update, but I should have mentioned it there. That’s a big swing! And frankly, sounds like great IP for a sci-fi streaming show. Tons of world-building potential.
