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The Slow Death of Hollywood

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#151

Post by paulddraper »

ravenstine wrote: post #51

Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. Remakes are seen as an excellent investment because, so long as they are properly stylized and full of dazzle, they are low-risk and have reasonable returns. Usually. This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. The other day, my cousin's 11 year old so…

> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again

Interestingly, the original Aladdin is no longer available for sale. Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, Walmart....whatever.

You either need to buy a disc from a garage sale, or pirate it.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#152

Post by dougmwne »

smogcutter wrote: post #138
sek wrote: post #40

I think it's a combination of things, but primarily we are in a low interest environment. Money is looking desperately for something to invest in and the problem of Hollywood and cable companies was that they made too much money. Netflix was a distributor who figured that out and was creating a low subscription model for content. When the content producers realised this Netflix was exposed, they knew they would not r…

The lower cost vs cable is a mirage. Once TV is finished balkanizing into separate streaming services, expect the cost of signing up for everything you had on cable to add up to about the cost of a cable subscription.

Most people I know cycle through the streaming services instead of subscribing to everything on the market. Streaming video is a very different product than cable. A single service gives you more on-demand content than you could ever watch. There's no particular rush to see a series since every season of a show is usually available. With cable you need the hundreds of channels to have any chance of finding something to watch, and if you miss it when it's live then too bad.

So people keep repeating that we're going to end up paying $100 a month for our subscription services, but I am going to happily keep paying about $12 a month. A quick google found an article from 2015 that Netflix is estimated to have about 35k hours of content. Another article claimed that Netflix adds an additional 3k hours of content each year. Do you really need to subscribe to 2x, 3x or 5x that amount all at once?

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#153

Post by PaulHoule »

I don't like the "all you can eat" model. I think it killed cable because people paid for stations even if they didn't watch them, so there was no feedback loop to reward better stations. It devalues content wherever it has been tried from music to video games.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#154

Post by holy_city »

gamblor956 wrote: post #148
holy_city wrote: post #31

I just wanted to disagree with the author's assertion : >[Netflix has] "slowly reconstructed the old vertically integrated studio system. The company is an integrated production and streaming service." Netflix is probably the least integrated business in Hollywood when it comes to production. To use an analogy, think of content as sausage. Netflix doesn't make the sausage and they don't care about how it's made. They…

Netflix doesn't make the sausage and they don't care about how it's made. They pay people a lot of money to do it, and that's about it. They're in the business of distributing the sausage. They also buy a lot of bulk sausage that they found at a sausage festival, meaning they had no stake before it was made. This is quite literally the opposite of the truth... Netflix makes a lot of the "sausage". They use roughly th…

It's a bit weird to say they have "some of the biggest" spaces if you don't count everyone else of note. But backlots and shootling locations are just a part of the recipe. Look at the end credits of Netflix originals and compare them to Disney, especially w.r.t. the VFX and post production shops. That's the difference in vertical integration I was trying to point out.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#155

Post by jonknee »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #3

"...Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation. The company is cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art. In other words, Netflix is subtly raising prices on subscribers and paying creators less for their work." I wonder if this means in the future, the price for a first and s…

It could also just not be true? No one but Netflix knows what shows their subscribers like and they're currently spending money like a drunken sailor so I'm hard pressed to believe any argument about paying less for their work. The author is not in the industry and has no access to what Netflix viewers are watching, how much Netflix pays or how much competitors of Netflix pay. What we do know is more shows are being made which means more jobs.

I bet it's more like Netflix realized what viewers have: the first few seasons are almost always the best. Perhaps it's not "straightforward market power exploitation" and it's just that later seasons from legacy players were renewed out of habit, time slots and pre sold ad sales and not because of quality?

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#156

Post by scarface74 »

mrkurt wrote: post #146
scarface74 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the problem is there is a chance that Netflix could be fourth at least in the US. Especially with Disney taking over Hulu. Hulu is already only $5.99 a month with commercials and $12.99 a month with no commercials. Disney will be moving most of it’s less kid friendly content over to Hulu. Disney Plus will only be $7.99. It’s not hard to imagine a bundled price for both - with better content - that’s less than Net…

Disney owns Hulu, I expect that'll be rolled into Disney+. I might be over estimating Netflix's skill in this area, but I suspect they are really good at converting production money into subscribers. All that said, none of this is good for creators or customers, it doesn't really matter if Netflix is first, second, or dead.

Disney isn’t going to roll Hulu into Disney+. Why would they when they can charge for both. Besides, Disney+ is suppose to be family friendly. Hulu isn’t it.

Disney doesn’t own Hulu outright yet. Warner Bros still has its 10% stake and Comcast still has its stake for now.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#157

Post by canthonytucci »

davesmith1983 wrote: post #118
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling culture nakedly has always been Disney's thing, the familiarity of the stories has always been a selling point with much of the market (and the “its just recycling what I've already experienced” has always been the refrain of another part of the market.) That's also true of Hollywood more generally. To the extent Hollywood is dying it's because new media (that are no less enthusiastic about recycling cultur…

It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a…

>There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s.

What channel is this? sounds great

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#158

Post by true_religion »

smogcutter wrote: post #138
sek wrote: post #40

I think it's a combination of things, but primarily we are in a low interest environment. Money is looking desperately for something to invest in and the problem of Hollywood and cable companies was that they made too much money. Netflix was a distributor who figured that out and was creating a low subscription model for content. When the content producers realised this Netflix was exposed, they knew they would not r…

The lower cost vs cable is a mirage. Once TV is finished balkanizing into separate streaming services, expect the cost of signing up for everything you had on cable to add up to about the cost of a cable subscription.

The problem with cable is that the lowest subscription amount was highly priced. Even with Balkanization, you can now simply choose to get less and pay less.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#159

Post by davesmith1983 »

canthonytucci wrote: post #157
davesmith1983 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a…

>There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s. What channel is this? sounds great

Nostalgia Nerd. This is his one about the Atari ST:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2pX6bU7-pU

And the Amiga (Part 1 of 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU&t=3s

I don't watch a lot of this stuff anymore because I've seen the story told quite a few times.

Then there is Kim Justice, who does "History of " style videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKjfs9hT3f4

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#160

Post by Retric »

scarface74 wrote: post #110
Retric wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about the situation today. Right now Netflix is paying Disney quite a bit of money to use their IP, but that really can change with time.

That’s not the point. Disney will soon have their own streaming service with a much better library.

That’s likely to present a problem.

Disney has a lot of depth in their library, but are unlikely to drastically reduce DVD/Blueray/etc sales by including the full thing. Meanwhile customers are going to be disappointed unless they have full access to their entire catalog for a very low monthly fee.

They may leverage the thing to surpass Netflix’s 150 million customer base. But, it’s far from a forgone conclusion at this point.

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