When they started out creating original content, they were hitting it out of the park. Orange is the new black, daredevil, house of cards were all big hits.
They scaled, quality was sacraficed for quantity, and their brand became very dilluted.
I've never used Hulu, but there's a good chance I'll sub in the next few months for the new season of The Orville. I'd expect anime series would be a great similar target- there are plenty of manga/novel adaptations that did one 13-episode series that covered the first fewbooks, and now the source material is finished with 25 more volumes they can adapt.
That only really works if you respect the original source material, which seems to be a problem for the "creatives".
The original version of House of Cards was a four episode mini-series. There was a lesson there that Netflix chose to ignore.
What is it? Network television spent decades milking shows way past their expiration dates and still made bank.
The Office was originally a 14-episode arc built to an actual conclusion and NBC made who knows how much with middling season after season of the US version.
People watched because we're creatures of habit and you only have to get us hooked once.
That didn't change. What changed is the # of options. Instead of 1/25 shows catching on its 100/2,500 and it doesn't scale the same way.
I was late to Netflix.
The original movies I saw were beyond bad. In every movie they used every plot twist ever invented, and every bit of cliched writing. The overpaid actors just read lines.
It's almost like they locked sober hack writers in a room and told them just write. Write like your audience is an angry/perverted Forrest Gump, and can't speak English. (I threw in sober because even if under the influence--they might have written better?)
They just wasted money.
I understand comming up with original clever scripts is hard.
I felt they could have redone classic movies though--instead of the garbage they threw at us.
I was watching Dog Day Afternoon the other day. The movie aged very well, and is an all time classic. No one is going to top that movie on any level.
Netflix could have tried to remake it though with up to date references, and even change up the script. Sonny, and Sal could have made it on the plane, and go from there.
Dog Day Afternoon is a bad example because it aged so well, but their are other good movies that could have been brought up to date?
I believe it's too late for Netflix.
In retrospect, I would have rather had them throw money at students in film school.
(I don't bet on stocks, but we all saw this comming. Every studio was working on their own pay per view service a year after we started talking about Netflix. Someone brobally made millions shorting that company.)