Back in the Pleistine era of Hollywood when newspapers existed and cared about entertainment and budgets weren’t slashed to shreds by paranoid beancounters looking to save their hides by delivering the least negative quarterly results–ya know, the 2010s–this would have been a time of year where a lot of networks and platforms would have gathered talent and journos in a fancy setting to crow about all the great stuff they had in the pipeline, a pilgrimage known as the Television Critics Association Tour. That’s no longer the case at a majority of media entities, so the organization pulled the plug on what had traditionally been a bi-annual event back last November. As THE WRAP’s Kayla Cobb wrote at the time:
The decision to cancel was made due to “deep contraction” in Hollywood. “While several streamers, networks and studios committed, it was not enough for a full press tour….” the organization’s president, Jacqueline Cutler, said in a statement to members.
It’s fairly obvs that at least one of those that committed was Netflix, since they seized upon the opportunity to mount a de facto press tour, upfront and victory lap yesterday at a star-studded gala they called NEXT ON NETFLIX, holding court at their recently purchased landmark The Egyptian Theatre. On a day where the world at large needed as many positive distractions as possible, entertainment media dropped story after story about what they’ve got coming up this year, a dizzyingly robust and diverse amalgamation of the familiar, the intriguing and the aggressive with something for just about anyone’s tastes–and considering they’ve now got 284 million global subscribers and counting, that’s a pretty monumental achievement.
Their house organ scribe Kasey Moore provided a month-by-month preview, and a snapshot of March alone reveals the breadth of their endeavors. You like documentaries? They’ve got projects highlighting Meghan Markle, Osama Bin Laden and Charles Manson–and I dare say depending upon your age and mindset there would be a robust competition for the response to the question as to who’s the bigger asshat. Cheesy reality competitions? New seasons of TEMPTATION ISLAND and Italy’s version of RHYTHM AND FLOW. A-list cast sci-fi? Try Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown’s ELECTRIC SLATE. Oh, and a new SpongeBob SquarePants movie.
DEADLINE’s Patrick Hipes was among the many that provided a comprehensive list of the movies planned for the balance of the year:
Netflix on Thursday unveiled a slew of details about its 2025 movie slate, including setting release dates for titles including Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein starring Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s reteam for Joe Carnahan’s RIP, and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out threequel Wake Up Dead Man that brings back Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc.
The news, coming as part of the streamer’s Next on Netflix 2025 presentation, included first-look or new images for many of its titles including for Happy Gilmore 2, The Woman in Cabin 10 starring Kiera Knightley and Guy Pearce, Tyler Perry’s Straw starring Taraji P. Henson, and soccer doc Vini Junior about the Brazil and Real Madrid star.
And our friend Rick Ellis offered up his own compendium of what’s ahead in series. More than 70 new and returning titles will be dropped in various iterations of bingability. Highly anticipated and in some cases climactic seasons of STRANGER THINGS, SQUID GAMES, YOU, NOBODY WANTS THIS and THE WITCHER. New and highly promotable efforts such as Robert DeNiro’s ZERO DAY and Tina Fey’s interpretation of the midlife crisis tour de force THE FOUR SEASONS. John Mulaney’s unpredictable live comedy/variety show, now titled EVERYBODY’S LIVE. A new installment of Ryan Murphy’s THE MONSTER anthology series. Plus two more Tyler Perry series, since who knows if BET+ will even be around in its current form much longer.
It was enough for Netflix’s content czarina Bela Bajaria to make a concerted effort to remind people exactly how many oars in the waters and how big a vessel they have, as DEADLINE’s Peter White conveyed:
At yesterday’s Next on Netflix event at the Egyptian Theater, she said, “Those of you who know me know that I love myth-busting. And one of the biggest myths about Netflix is that we don’t do ‘prestige TV’ — or we don’t do as much of it as we used to. Now, the most annoying thing about this myth — besides the fact that it’s not true — is that nobody knows what ‘prestige TV’ actually is. Is it a critically acclaimed show? Does it win awards? Is it a show audiences love? Is it one that people at your dinner parties in New York and L.A. talk about? Like I said, no one knows. The only thing we do know is that a lot of people who brag about making prestige TV have a very narrow audience.”
One could practically sense the slow burns that were likely occuring in the offices of John Landgraf and Casey Bloys and their minions once they got wind of this shot fired across the bow. And it was especially resonant with the team at The Ringer, who regularly celebrate this niche with audio efforts called THE PRESTIGE TV PODCAST and THE WATCH. On THE WATCH episode dropped yesterday afternoon, the Philadelphia duo of Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald gave this an extended discussion where they confessed that Belaria was spot on, which I suspect wasn’t easy given their almost fealty-like admiration for the aforementioned moguls. Their corollary point that referenced exactly why these Netflix shows are getting the level of outsized attention and audience that they are.
At the same time that this volume of attention-getting content is being dropped at a dizzying rate, the platform is simultaneously investing in more populist appointment tonnage to provide both subscriber traction and algorithmic stickiness. Their acquistion of WWE RAW has already been covered in these musings ad infinitum, and it’s seen as a key reason why Netflix exceeded expectations for global growth in the last fiscal quarter that they chose to share subscriber metrics. Ryan and Greenwald also reminded that their acquisitions have punched well above their weight–and it’s not just the procedurals like CRIMINAL MINDS or the high-volume off-network sitcoms like FRIENDS that got them to the dance that are doing it. Much as they did with SUITS, they have taken a decently-sized but orphaned cable series to viewership levels they never reached in their first run. The latest example of that is YOUNGER, TV LAND’s seven-season exploration of a fortysomething divorcee reinventing herself by somehow convincing a millennial-centric company that she was in her mid-twenties. TV LAND was catering to fans closer in age to Sutton Foster’s lead role at the time and partnering it with the likes of HOT IN CLEVELAND, the spiritual and demographic successor to THE GOLDEN GIRLS. Netflix has that audience as well as those more in demographic parallel to co-star Hilary Duff’ who never did turn out to the extent that producers might have hoped. Now being showcased and reignited on the Lourdes of entertainment, it ranks in the Top 5 of all Netflix titles, and rumblings of a revival are rampant.
And the reality is that Netflix can do that and practically anything else they might want to do at this point. They have the scale, breadth and seeming determination to own both the populist and critical sectors, and they are capable of effectively recreating their own TCA to get that attention. Yesterday we were all reminded of just that, whether we wanted or needed to hear it. I dare say they won that battle and at the point are clearly in ownership of the championship belt.
Until next time…