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The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

nytimes.com

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Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#331

Post by ausbah »

n3dm wrote: post #330
davely wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where services like Rdio (sigh), Spotify and Apple Music have done really well, in my opinion. If I want to listen to some music, it’s practically guaranteed to be right there in the one music service I’m paying for. If I want to watch a show or movie, there’s now a bunch of cognitive overhead going going on. - Which app is it in? - Do we have that one? - Do we have a subscription? - Wait, how do we navigate…

Funny because I'm using Spotify paid and I'm getting closer and closer to cancelling that with all the bugs and advertising. Using a web player the music just mites itself for 10 seconds at a time, skips tracks on its own. Pauses. The mobile app hits you with full screen ads and big banner ads at the top that you can't disable. It's the most annoying service I use for streaming.

what ads are you getting on spotify mobile? occasionally i’ll get a full page banner for a new track or feature but that’s about it

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#332

Post by hinkley »

WalterBright wrote: post #217
hinkley wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to show Flash Gordon to anyone? It has not gone well for me. I think it's just our special little thing.

FG laid an egg when it first came out. Over time, FG seems to have gained quite a following and is now a classic. The usual criticism is it's too over the top, too campy. But they miss the point - it was supposed to be over the top and campy. The dialog is still funny after 40+ years: Klytus: Bring me... the bore worms! Princess Aura: No! Not the bore worms! The movie is just crammed with gems like that. It should ha…

It was supposed to be an acting vehicle for a football player. It's so camp.

But it also has Max von Sydow in it, and Brian Blessed is every bit as over the top as he is in season 1 of Black Adder.

It occupies much the same genre as Big Trouble in Little China and the Evil Dead movies. If you're looking for something deep, you're in the wrong place.

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#333

Post by atombender »

burningChrome wrote: post #149
RajT88 wrote: post #10

I love these stories of sci-fi movie diasasters. There are just as many insane stories of "amazing this classic ever got made". On the topic of disasters, I recommend reading about The Starlost: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlost

Reminds me of the outrage over the $100M budget of Water World and how it barely got made. Today, a $100M budget is nothing. We've already had several $300M budget films this year. Hollywood can be so crazy sometimes.

$100m in 1995 would be $200m today, mind you. It was an expensive movie.

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#334

Post by atombender »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #62
askonomm wrote: post #59

I wish they'd make another Altered Carbon season. And bring back Joel Kinnaman. The first season was amazing.

Or more Electric Dreams! Great production value Philip K Dick short stories. I haven't actually watched Altered Carbon but I have a trail of Takeshi Kovacs characters in various mmos and games, and am in general a Richard K Morgan fan. I loved Altered Carbon series. His recent-er Thirteen was fun imaginative Mars stuff. Market Forces is old old old & has a lot of mediocre aspects, but I loved the Car Wars style setti…

That show butchered the original stories, though. And for some reason they picked some Dick's earliest and least interesting 1950s pulp-era stories, rather than the later, more mature. Autofac is the only classic that stands out, and the adaptation is both atrocious and unfaithful to the story.

Why not "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts", "Second Variety", "Impostor", "Faith of Our Fathers", "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", "Colony" or "Foster, You're Dead"? I wonder if it's because someone owns the rights? Some of these have already been adapted, though never faithfully.

In fact, a faithful adaptation of a PKD story or novel has never been made. Which is odd, for two reasons. One, PKD wrote quite filmable stories, with excellent dialogue and well-paced plots that should not pose a problem for anyone trying to adapt them to screen.

And secondly, why would you change anything? You adapt PKD because of the idea and how brilliantly it unfolds to its conclusion; if you replace that with your own spin, it's no longer PKD. Blade Runner very much lacks the feel of a PKD story, for example (no absurdist humour, no existential angst, no color; everything is just drab and dreary, which is a property that plagued some of his mainstream writings but very few of his SF works; if BR feels like anything it's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which is a sad and bleak book).

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#335

Post by fastball »

Terretta wrote: post #317
fastball wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making more back doesn't really change the misappropriation. Martin Shkreli went to prison for doing effectively the same exact thing.

Completely agree doesn't change misappropriation. But his misappropriation came out ahead, instead of "blowing it". So in the end, probably no lesson was learned.

He blew 6m on the stock market. He made more back on Dogecoin (which isn't on the stock market).

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#336

Post by augustulus »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #327
augustulus wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genres/drama/scifiandfantas... it’s not communism if you don’t have to pay for it. it makes me so angry that politically compromised right-wingers choose to misunderstand this. if I go to the supermarket and just walk out with my shopping, that’s a crime in the same way that it’s a crime if I get on the train without paying or turn on the BBC and watch without paying, this isn’t some…

> if you don’t have to pay for it ... the BBC isn’t funded through taxes, the consumer has choice ... just don’t pay for it. watch something else ... vote with your feet like you can do with any other streaming service You keep talking as if the license fee is a normal TV subscription. Are you British because there seems to be a really deep misunderstanding here? The license fee is a tax. You have to pay it if you wa…

what I don’t understand is why people say things that they don’t know are true. you can’t know this is true, because it isn’t. next time the tv license people send you a letter, actually read it

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#337

Post by vunderba »

WalterBright wrote: post #217
hinkley wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to show Flash Gordon to anyone? It has not gone well for me. I think it's just our special little thing.

FG laid an egg when it first came out. Over time, FG seems to have gained quite a following and is now a classic. The usual criticism is it's too over the top, too campy. But they miss the point - it was supposed to be over the top and campy. The dialog is still funny after 40+ years: Klytus: Bring me... the bore worms! Princess Aura: No! Not the bore worms! The movie is just crammed with gems like that. It should ha…

I'm not sure I understand why you find those lines particularly comedic. Campy? Most definitely. They also don't really work out of context, so I sat down and watched the actual scene and well... they're still not a particularly funny line, and I don't think the scene is meant to be funny. Are you suggesting that they're intentionally hamming it up? Honestly, I can't even tell if this point.

Wikipedia seems to support this theory as well:

"Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the script. He later recalled:

Dino wanted to make Flash Gordon humorous. At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic. That was a catastrophic thing to do, with so much money involved... I never thought the character of Flash in the script was particularly good. But there was no pressure to make it any better. Dino had a vision of a comic-strip character treated in a comic style. That was silly, because Flash Gordon was never intended to be funny. The entire film got way out of control."

It seems like the kind of show that would fit well in mystery science theater though. This is likely just one of those things that is more of a time capsule, or a period piece, it's likely very difficult for people who grew up watching this type of show to be able to objectively have an opinion about it without nostalgia creeping in.

Personally, I can't fathom thinking the 1980s Flash Gordon was a good movie while the 1980s Dune movie was not.

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#338

Post by ekianjo »

selcuka wrote: post #273
echelon wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix (or any streaming service) users are not captive audience. The network effect for such services is next to nil. Their moat is in the content and licenses they've acquired. You can't watch Stranger Things anywhere else. They make a lot of original content to widen their moat and keep eyeballs returning to their platform. Netflix also currently has (I believe) exclusive streaming access to Breaking Bad (thoug…

That's my point. They have to continuously invest in content to keep you as a subscriber. They can't simply enshittify [1] their service and expect customers to stay, unlike, say, a social media platform. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

> can't simply enshittify

Of course they can. They already added ads. Have you not been watching?

Re: The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

#339

Post by _npe3 »

krapp wrote: post #193
livinginfear wrote: post #15

Since we're discussing the economics of film/TV studios, and their weird decisions. I'd like to understand why the studios are still making Star Trek shows. Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last. That's costing studios far more than $55M. Picard alone cost ~$9M per episode according to Wikipedia.

> Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last. Only to a certain subset of "fans" who have made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics, and a grift on Youtube. They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted. In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.

this has got to be the least self-aware comment I've ever seen on this website
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