Netflix may have won the streaming wars, but it certainly wasn’t because of the quality of its original movies. Sure, there have been some critical darlings and fun crowd-pleasers here or there, but in general, the streamer has earned a reputation for releasing a high volume of mediocrity. Talk to ten people about what they’ve watched recently, and you’ll probably hear at least several of them use the phrase, “well, for a Netflix movie…” For the first time in a long time, however, there may be reason for some optimism.
A few years ago, Netflix replaced the head of its original movie department Scott Stuber with Dan Lin, and this week, The New York Times published an extended profile talking about what’s changed. Under Stuber, Netflix’s prime motivation was reportedly to be taken seriously and to get premium Hollywood talent to work with them. Now that the OG goal has been accomplished, Lin is reportedly changing the mission to focus more specifically on genres.
In a big behind the scenes shakeup, Lin reportedly restructured the movie division at Netflix. Once upon a time, everyone was reportedly structured into divisions based on budget levels. Now, they’ve been repositioned based on genres. There was reportedly some grumbling and pushback when the change happened, but from my vantage point, it feels like the first big step to Netflix figuring it out.
For a long time, Netflix reportedly focused on filmmakers bringing fully realized projects to the studio. A director or a producer would meet with Netflix executives and say, I want to make a movie based off this script that stars these people, and I need this certain budget level to achieve that vision. The streamer is still doing some of them, but Lin is reportedly encouraging his new genre teams to be much more proactive about the process now. He wants his team to go find scripts, filmmakers and stars and get involved early in the process.
The problem with the Netflix model, at least from my perspective, has always been that their finished movies are often very bland and uninspired takes on various genres. Most of them are, to be clear, decent and a nice enough way to spend a few hours, but they feel like movies other studios probably passed on. It has felt like, in a lot of cases, producers shopped their films to the more traditional studios who would have given the films theatrical releases, and then once they said no, they circled back to Netflix as a back-up plan.
As a Netflix subscriber and someone who enjoys watching good movies, I really want to see the streamer figure this out, and to me, that starts with getting really good at a couple of genres. It’s too overwhelming to think about making 80 good movies every single year, but if you have 10 teams focused on different genres that are all tasked with making 8 movies within that genre each year, the goal suddenly seems feasible. Even if only a few of those teams succeed at their mission, the studio will start acquiring a reputation for being really good at a certain type of thing. It’s worked in television, and there’s no reason to think it can’t work in movies too.
I have no idea how we’re going to feel about Netflix movies a few years from now. Maybe by that point, no one is saying “well, for a Netflix movie.” Or maybe by that point we’re onto a new studio executive. I have no idea, but I am confident that trying to get good at specific genres is a better approach than trying to get good at specific budget levels. I’m optimistic, and I think other Netflix subscribers should be too.
