The unending expansion of Netflix, still easily the most streamed of all the streamers, has turned it into an ambitious one-stop shop for all, home to both the elegant and the gaudy. This gap is never clearer than at the end of the year when the platform’s prestigious Oscar-aiming fare is available alongside its cheapo Christmas movies, the same restaurant offering you both fillet mignon and beef jerky.
Just last week, on the same day that Netflix released Jacques Audiard’s acclaimed Cannes award-winning trans musical drama Emilia Pérez, it also launched Hot Frosty, a film starring Lacey Chabert as a woman falling for a snowman who comes to life. It’s part of the appeal, the multitudes within, but again, this season, it has highlighted what the people really want. While Emilia Pérez has failed to crack the top 10 most watched, Hot Frosty remains at number one (Audiard’s Oscar-buzzed movie is estimated to have entered 277,000 US households compared to the more than 1m reached by Christina Milian’s perfectly entertaining Christmas movie out the week before). Netflix paid a reported $12m to buy Emilia Perez at Cannes, a sum that could essentially fund the entire season of micro-budgeted festive movies.
