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TV series gone awry
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
As a fan? Sure, that’s dumb. As a business? I think it’s less clear-cut.
Especially when the source material are a niche property - like The Witcher when the games were starting out. I don’t know how popular the books are now, but back then they were absolutely not as mainstream, much like most fantasy - even more so given their Eastern European origins.
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
I’m also not talking about the Witcher specifically. Or any show specifically, for that matter. I was addressing Arkandel’s general point about it being dumb for a studio to hire a show-runner who didn’t want to stay faithful to the original material. As a fan? Sure, that’s dumb. As a business? I think it’s less clear-cut.
But let’s work with that.
What is the business upside of enraging the fanbase? In other words, why make Halo and have a bunch of game nerds creating negative noise about your expensive property and not pull a House of the Dragon, and have them sing praises for it and create artwork, attend conventions, buy shirts etc instead?
Why pick people to run this property who actually dislike the material you bought in the first place?
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@Arkandel One has to remember: We’re in the fanbase. So it looks big to us, because we’re surrounded by it.
I’m not saying any one fanbase is actually small, but we do have to keep it in perspective and remember that we don’t have the information Netflix has, we’ll likely never have their data, so we can’t really judge their decisions as being rash or bad because we have different data to them.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
What is the business upside of enraging the fanbase? In other words, why make Halo and have a bunch of game nerds creating negative noise about your expensive property and not pull a House of the Dragon, and have them sing praises for it and create artwork, attend conventions, buy shirts etc instead?
Why pick people to run this property who actually dislike the material you bought in the first place?Obviously I’m not a studio executive, so I can only speculate about what discussions go on behind closed doors. But I don’t think anybody sets out to deliberately make something awful.
One of my fav shows is “Earth 2”. I could say to Netflix: “Hey, I think this show had a really cool premise, but the execution was kinda cheesy and there were so many plot holes and I think I can do it better. Here’s my pitch…” The changes I’d make would probably piss off some purist fans, but maybe it ends up getting all kinds of buzz and awards and everybody loves it. (like RDM’s Battlestar)
Heck, JMS is pitching a rebooted/modernized Babylon 5. If it comes to fruition, I’m sure the fact that it’s not exactly like the original will make some fans mad too and it’s his own freaking show/story.
Studios generally aren’t making shows “for the fans”. They’re using the fans as a tool in their marketing strategy. And even negative attention can make people take notice and maybe tune in to see what the fuss is about.
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@Pavel Sure, but we also have to assume having a fanbase is the reason Netflix bought the property in the first place, right?
In other words if the fanbase is tiny then why not start fresh, since surely those few people won’t really make a difference. That they spent money upfront suggests their data shows there was a significant upside enough to do so.
The only plausible reason I can see is if the changes made will bring in that much more revenue by appealing to a greater mass of people. I don’t how what data could have led Netflix to go “well, I guess Master Chief doesn’t need to keep his helmet on”.
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To me, with only my anecdotal experience available, it seems like a frog in a pot of water situation. They put the fans in the pot of water and slowly turn the heat up - in this case by changing things incrementally.
The metaphor breaks down a bit if you think about it too closely, but like Faraday said above, they use fans to bring in the initial bump of advertising or support or whatever, that brings in other people who don’t care as much about the source but just think it’s a bit of fun, then they make changes and make changes etc etc etc.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
I don’t how what data could have led Netflix to go “well, I guess Master Chief doesn’t need to keep his helmet on”.
Seems pretty easy to me even without access to Netflix’s data:
- Far more people vaguely know what Halo is than know (or care) that Master Chief isn’t supposed to take his helmet off.
- Never taking your helmet off is kind of a weird quality for a human being, so that behavior could be off-putting for a main character.
- You’re paying the actor to act, and a lot of acting is done with the face.
It’s the same reason they were worried about Mando in the Mandalorian not being able to connect with audiences.
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Seem relevant:
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Re: the behavior of corporate executives, I think the ‘they’re just morons’ is an idea that shouldn’t be too easily dismissed either. There’s this very popular (and very pro-capitalist) notion that the market leads, that businesses optimize, everything is hyper-rational, we’re just plebes that don’t understand, etc. Fans don’t matter, they got your money, etc!
But uh.
The entirety of the movie industry is having trouble, and we’re fed headlines (omg it made a billion dollars!) that are propaganda designed to undermine the underlying realities: Box office records are non-inflation adjusted as an industry standard for a reason (the myth of perpetual growth), and a billion dollar box office doesn’t actually have a large profit margin on a $250mm budget, once you factor in marketing and theater share (especially when that money is coming from foreign markets, and especially x2 if it’s coming from China).
Streaming is successful, but it’s built on cannibalizing the rest of the industry. The studio platforms have deep libraries, but they’re fundamentally competing with themselves, so gains in those divisions are reflected in losses elsewhere (this isn’t even some behind the scenes arcane accounting concept, its the core of the streaming window debates, of the ScarJo lawsuit, etc). Netflix is its own beast, trading that self-competition for piles of debt due to painful licensing costs.
And the fandom? Maybe individual fans deep cut lore gripes don’t matter to the bottom line, but that’s the aspect that gets exaggerated for the sake of outrage journalism. The MCU certainly isn’t 100% comics accurate, but it hit enough touchstones that it was widely embraced. Star Wars, on the other hand? Uh, they went from 1 movie per year to ‘streaming only’ with a gaggle of projects on hiatus. If that’s not a resounding fan rejection having consequences, I don’t know what is.
And for Netflix, the ‘you’ll still watch it anyway!’ doesn’t really matter. Viewership numbers are meaningless short of uber-hits at the Stranger things level; costs and subscriptions are their bottom line, which is how Sandman can be a question mark. Netflix is now losing subscribers. Maybe ‘they’ll still watch it.’ But I really doubt people will add Netflix subscriptions to tune into Witcher S4. And that’s if we get there, since 3 seasons tends to be the threshold of their cancellation math (when they don’t axe things immediately).
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@bored said in TV series gone awry:
There’s this very popular (and very pro-capitalist) notion that the market leads, that businesses optimize, everything is hyper-rational, we’re just plebes that don’t understand, etc.
As someone who is three classes away from completing an MBA (with a specialty in marketing, no less)…
Yes. Pretty much this. This is the standard expectation in just about every industry, including the creative ones. A lot of places will talk a big game about things like ‘human-centered design’, but most of these people don’t know what that is when you actually push them on it. (Not even the ones claiming they’re qualified to be teaching it. <side-eyes their entrepreneurship professor>)
They just know that any subscription-based product or service is a guarantee of regular cash flow and, in anything that is B2C as opposed to B2B, are trying to relentlessly pursue this even if it makes no fucking sense for what their company sells. If they can sell you a subscription-based service while minimizing their production costs, even better.
So bear that in mind when you’re examining anything coming out of creative studios. The directors are trying to make art. Maybe even some of the producers! But the executives running the business are trying to make money and will always go for whatever they think will appeal to largest possible audience, built-in fanbases be damned. There is no money to be made in niche products when you’re targeting an SOM of millions.
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Not a “TV series” issue but I think it fits here anyway.
Apparently there’s a DCU clash between James Gunn and The Rock about focusing future overall arcs on Black Adam instead of Superman.
It’s probably BS, but it does give me X-Men movie vibes where Mystique got so much more attention once Jennifer Lawrence became an A-lister between films.
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Which is weird, since after First Class, Jennifer Lawrence looked like she’s so bored she was fighting to not walk off the set in every shot she’s in.
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@GF Contractual obligations, suddenly much better projects available she can’t do due to scheduling conflicts and enough money to no longer need X-Men probably played a significant role there.
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
I don’t how what data could have led Netflix to go “well, I guess Master Chief doesn’t need to keep his helmet on”.
Seems pretty easy to me even without access to Netflix’s data:
- Far more people vaguely know what Halo is than know (or care) that Master Chief isn’t supposed to take his helmet off.
- Never taking your helmet off is kind of a weird quality for a human being, so that behavior could be off-putting for a main character.
- You’re paying the actor to act, and a lot of acting is done with the face.
It’s the same reason they were worried about Mando in the Mandalorian not being able to connect with audiences.
Similar thing with Judge Dredd (I’m British, of course I’m going to use Judge Dredd as the example of a character with a helmet on). One of the main reasons Stallone was hated by the fans was that he took the helmet off; Karl Urban is revered for keeping it on.
Incidentally, someone had obviously put the hat on and spent time in front of a mirror with the comics, gurning until he got it right. Karl Urban was just about perfect.
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Every time one of my streaming services tells me I should continue on with ‘The Watch’ based on Pratchett’s books. I die a little more inside.
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@Wuff That was awful!
