The Melissa McCarthy buddy comedy almost gathered a billion minutes of U.S. streaming during the week of April 5-11, according to Nielsen’s weekly SVOD top 10 ranking list.
Netflix’s First Big Buy Should Be Discovery
Tara Lachapelle: “It’s hard to imagine Discovery+ surviving the streaming wars as a stand-alone product. But its immense library would improve the value proposition of any of the leading apps faster than the occasional big-budget movie can.”
A jury found Michael Kail, VP of internet technology at Netflix from 2012 to 2014, guilty of more than two dozen counts of felony fraud and money laundering for accepting cash, stock options and gifts from third-party vendors in exchange for contracts with the firm.
For the first time, all four outlets the ratings service measures places a show among the top 10 original series.
Netflix had a big night at the Oscars, bringing home a total of seven total trophies — leading all studios — although the streamer failed to grab the prize in the best picture category and came up empty in the acting categories. Netflix had come into Sunday night with 36 nominations, far more than any other studio.
Netflix has been strengthening its controls on password-sharing, a shift that could reap billions in previously lost revenue, but the company acknowledges it is a delicate process. “We test many things but we would never roll something out that feels like turning the screws” on consumers, Co-CEO Reed Hastings said during the company’s first-quarter earnings interview. “It’s got to feel like it makes sense to consumers, that they understand it.”
Exclusives
The video streaming service added 4 million more worldwide subscribers from January through March, its smallest gain during that three-month period in four years. The performance reported Tuesday was about 2 million fewer subscribers than both management and analysts had predicted Netflix would add during the first quarter.
Subscriptions at streaming giant surged last year, but consumers are now looking to get out.
While the streaming wars have added many competitive services to Netflix, the end result of media’s shift to streaming may cement Netflix as the center of household entertainment. Since the day Disney+ launched, Netflix shares have risen more than 87%. That dwarfs gains by every other media company during the same time period.
The streaming gold rush of 2017-18, when Netflix scooped up big-name television creators, now seems to have migrated to the film world.
The streaming giant has handed out a third and fourth season renewal for the period drama from executive producer Shonda Rhimes.
The Netflix historical drama landed on Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming programs list for the first time in weeks.
Netflix and Sony Pictures Entertainment have set a significant new licensing deal giving the streaming giant an exclusive window for the studio’s theatrical titles starting in 2022. The agreement, which replaces an output arrangement with Lionsgate-owned Starz dating back to 2005, provides Netflix with an 18-month exclusive window for Sony films. Multiple bidders had been angling for the rights for some time. Terms were not officially disclosed, but Netflix prevailed with an offer of $1 billion over four years, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s first Netflix series will center on the Invictus Games, which gives sick and injured military personnel and veterans the opportunity to compete in sports. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell Productions announced Tuesday its first series to hit the streaming service. The multi-episode docuseries, titled “Heart of Invictus,” is […]
After a year in which streaming became even more important to millions of Americans, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, Netflix still dominates the streaming universe in the U.S. But new competitors like HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock are already eating into Netflix’s lead in the streaming wars.
Netflix is closing in on a deal to make two sequels to the 2019 hit whodunit Knives Out, which Rian Johnson will direct with Daniel Craig reprising his role as super sleuth Benoit Blanc. Johnson, who wrote the original, has written the sequels and is producing with partner Ram Bergman. Sources said the deal will be worth north of $400 million, making it one of the biggest streamer movie deals in history.
BEND, Ore. (AP) — The Blockbuster video rental store in Bend, Oregon, soared to international fame when it became the last such franchise on Earth two years ago. Now, a new Netflix documentary called “The Last Blockbuster” brought even more interest in the form of visitors, mail and online orders to the unassuming location in […]
After a pandemic year that shuttered most movie theaters, none of the expected best-picture nominees will have hardly any box office to speak of. It will be an Oscars not just without blockbusters but with many movies that have hardly played on the big screen. Streaming services are set to dominate Hollywood’s biggest and most sought-after awards. Nominations will be announced beginning at 8:19 a.m. ET and the film academy and ABC will telecast the Oscars on April 25 (delayed two months due to the pandemic).
In what could be a major departure in strategy, the streaming giant in recent months has explored licensing some of its movies and series to other TV outlets owned by companies like NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS, say people familiar with the situation. The discussions indicate how Netflix, long the 800-pound gorilla in the streaming market, may be more open than previously thought to a decades-old way of making money from its programming—basically selling shows to a variety of media outlets to be aired at different time periods. This approach emphasized limited availability, unlike the streaming strategy of making every program available all the time for the price of the subscription. The streaming strategy in recent years has undermined the long-term value of programming, eroding the profitability of Hollywood.
A Netflix spokesperson confirms that the streaming giant is testing a stopgap measure to crack down on the unauthorized use of account login information.
Jessell | Social Media Documentary Misses The Mark
Netflix’s cautionary Social Dilemma overstates the data-driven power of Facebook, YouTube and others to engage users and effectively target advertising and it doesn’t address the real cause for concern — their enormous size and reach. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.
The streamer commissioned the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative to analyze its 2018 and 2019 original, live-action films and series, and presented the results to members of the press Thursday in a video presentation. The results were, as Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder and director Stacy L. Smith noted, far more positive than most Annenberg reports, which have typically found only slow, sporadic improvement in the most popular films.
Digital TV Research says quickening Hotstar uptake in India convinced it to boost its earlier Disney Plus forecast by nearly 100,000 subscribers.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has announced that the U.S. streaming giant will open a new office in Canada and hire a content chief dedicated to commissioning local originals. In a blog post, Sarandos said Netflix has spent CAD $2.5 billion (US$2 billion) in Canada since 2017 and it’s time to double down on its presence in the country, which has provided members with shows including Anne With An E and Workin’ Moms.
According to Netflix’s shadowy numbers-crunchers, a record 82 million global households glimpsed the Shonda Rhimes-produced period drama in its first 28 days of release, making it the streamer’s No. 1 series launch in history — ongoing, limited or otherwise.
Netflix is planning to expand worldwide a test feature that allows subscribers to simply click a button and let the streamer pick programming to watch. Tested in France and other markets, the “Shuffle Play” feature acts as an old-school TV channel broadcasting shows on a loop.
The average U.S. household increased its streaming subscriptions to four from three in the past eight months, chipping away at SVOD pioneer Netflix’s market share, according to a J.D. Power survey. Netflix still holds the No. 1 spot among streaming services — it had about 74 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers in 4Q 2020 — but five of the next six largest streaming providers gained market share since April 2020.
The period drama based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling novels marks Shonda Rhimes’ first series for the streaming giant.
The streaming giant borrowed over $16 billion in less than a decade as it built out its content library. The strategy prompted criticism that the company was unsustainable.
Netflix’s Big 4Q Lifts It Above 200M Subscribers
The subscriber milestone highlighted Netflix’s fourth-quarter results released Tuesday. The service added another 8.5 million subscribers during the October-December period to cap Netflix’s biggest year since its inception as a DVD-by-mail service in 1997. Netflix’s stock surged by nearly 9% in extended trading after the latest subscriber numbers came out.
