You can tell Netflix is feeling its big-studio oats by the fights it’s accepting.

First came the clash with major Hollywood studios with Roma, which is vying to become the first streaming service film to win Best Picture when the Oscars are handed out February 24. Then it won the bidding war at Sundance for distribution rights to the Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile. And now it’s prepping for a scrape with Disney’s pending streaming service, Disney +.

Netflix officially called off its relationship with the Marvel TV Universe with the cancellation of The Punisher and Jessica Jones Monday, drawing the ire of some fans and stars alike. Eminem took the service to task for dropping Punisher, one of his favorite shows.

In a tweet Wednesday night, the rapper wrote: ‘DEAR @NETFLIX, REGARDING YOUR CANCELLATION OF THE PUNISHER, YOU ARE BLOWING IT!! SINCERELY, MARSHALL”

The cancellations were’t entirely unexpected. Late last year, the streaming giant dropped Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The moves added to a growing fanbase angry at the streaming service; fans launched an online campaign, #SaveDaredevil, to keep the show afloat, as its prospects on Disney+ are uncertain.

But data suggests that Netflix was warranted to cancel The Punisher. Viewership for the show dropped 40% from 2017’s first season to last month’s second season in their first weekends of release, according to data from analytics company Jumpshot.

Beyond individual shows, however, the fates of the programs underscore a larger strategic battle brewing between Netflix and Disney. Disney CEO Bob Iger has called the Disney+ streaming service the company’s “biggest priority” for 2019, and said the studio has for months planned a divorce from Netflix so it can launch its own service as the exclusive streaming home for Disney movies, TV shows and other original programming.

Marvel TV President Jeph Loeb penned a letter thanking the hundreds of cast and crew who worked on all the shows, from Daredevil onwards, and the fans for watching. Loeb also teased that the characters could return in the distant future, but in what capacity remains to be seen.

“Our Network partner may have decided they no longer want to continue telling the tales of these great characters,” Loeb wrote, “but you know Marvel better than that. As Matthew Murdock’s Dad once said, ‘The measure of a man is not how he gets knocked to the mat, it’s how he gets back up.’”

Netflix’s strategy, meanwhile, seems to have shifted its cross-hairs to another outlet, Dark Horse Comics. Already, it produced a film from one of Dark Horse’s webcomic and graphic novel series, Polar. And this month the service released the first season of The Umbrella Academy, another Dark Horse venture.

Loeb perhaps best summed up the upcoming battle with the final line of his letter to fans, a three-word promise: “To be continued.”

 

Huai'an Roma‘s 10 Oscar nominations underscored not only the streaming service’s growing clout in Hollywood, but confirmed what analysts have been noticing since it hit airwaves a dozen years ago:

Netflix is altering almost everything we view, from movies to TV shows to viral videos.

Despite its fourth — and biggest — price hike in its 12-year history, 2018 proved a stellar year for Netflix and, more importantly, demonstrated the increasing reach and muscle of the streaming service. http://childpsychiatryassociates.com///wp-content/plugins/fancy-product-designer/assets/css/fancy-product.css  Roma‘s 10 Oscar nods tied  The Favourite for most nominations.

Netflix announced a price hike of 13% to 18% (or $1 to $2 depending on viewing package) earlier this month, explaining that the hike would generate an additional $1 billion for new programming. Despite the hike, only 3% of its 140 million subscribers said in surveys they would drop the service, and Netflix stock rose 7% on the NASDAQ the day of the announcement.

From commercial movies to traditional TV to competing streaming services to the Internet itself, Netflix has become the Miramax of its day, only bigger, changing the viewing landscape the way the arthouse studio once changed film.

Consider its recent achievements, announced in a quarterly last month, in which it is finally sharing audience numbers. And they’re huge:

• Netflix said that Bird Box, released last year, added another 35 million households in the first four weeks after its release, bringing its total audience to 80 million households. Considering the average movie ticket costs $9.12, that means Bird Box drew the equivalent of  $729.6 million at the U.S. box office alone. And that’s assuming only one viewer per household watched.
• Sex Education, a new Netflix program geared to demographically-friendly younger audiences, reached 40 million households in just four weeks.
• The service is expanding internationally as well: Elite, which comes out of Spain, reached 20 million households in its first month, while Bodyguard (the UK), and The Protector (Turkey), and Baby (Italy) all reached more than 10 million households in their first four weeks.

Netflix is dominating high-profile skirmishes with other outlets, too. The Lifetime network released the chiller You with such high hopes that it greenlit a second season before the first was released. But when it pulled in an average of only .6 million viewers, it sold the rights to Netflix, which promptly pulled in 40 million viewers its first month.

In a battle of streaming services, Hulu attempted to get the jump on Netflix with a documentary on the catastrophic Fyre music festival, unexpectedly opening  Fyre Fraud four days before Netflix’s Fyre. While critics split over which was the better documentary, Netflix grabbed the headlines with a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $100,000 for vendors cheated by the scam festival.

Even YouTube has had to contend with Netflix’s reach. Following the wildly popular #Birdboxchallenge, the viral video outlet banned dangerous stunt videos from its airwaves.

Already, traditional TV networks and Hollywood studios are feeling the pinch. To date, Netflix has captured 63 Primetime Emmys, 31 Daytime Emmys, and 11 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Earlier this month, it was the surprise winner of Best Picture and five other statues at the Critics Choice Awards and the winner of two Golden Globe Awards, for best director (Alfonso Cuarón) and Best Foreign Language Film.

The movie’s 10 Oscar nominations have already ratcheted up the battle between theaters and home viewing. AMC and Regal theaters, the nation’s largest theater chains, announced they will ban Roma from playing during their Oscar Best Picture Showcase Screenings. Every year AMC and Regal screen the Best Picture nominees back to back, but because Roma was released on Netflix, only seven of the eight nominees in will play in 2019.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Netflix estimates that it now accounts for 10 percent of TV screen time in the US. (Its math here: Netflix says it streams 100 million hours a day to TV screens in the US, and it figures those TVs — which include more than one TV per household, plus sets in bars, hotels, etc. — are on for a billion hours a day.)

“When you think about some of the distribution deals (we’ve) done over the last couple of years,” Eric Sheridan, a Nexflix analyst, said in the company’s quarterly report, ” that’s creating some noise.”

 

As Michael Clayton and Nightcrawler illustrated, Dan Gilroy is masterful at portraying the horrific underbelly of human nature. When it comes to outright  horror, though, his artistic style seems a little rough around the edges.

Such is the mixed result of his fun-but-flawed latest work, Velvet Buzzsaw, which premiered at Sundance last week before settling into full run on Netflix. Directing his third film, Gilroy delivers a wonderful sendup of the cultural elite and the air-kissing art-world they inhabit. But when the movie attempts to morph from satire to savagery, the lines begins to smudge.

Reuniting his Nightcrawler stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo,  the movie  opens at Basel, the actual, annual bazaar of million-dollar art-buying in Miami Beach. Floating through the gallery in a Brian de Palma-style sweep, Gilroy introduces most of the main characters: Gyllenhaal’s high-handed critic Morf Vandewalt; L.A. gallery owner Rhodora Haze (Gilroy’s real-life wife Russo); her oily  competitor Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge); ambitious assistant Josephina (Zawe Ashton); art handler Bryson (Billy Magnusson); and museum executive Gretchen (Toni Collette), a piranha of an art consultant. We also meet Piers (John Malkovich) and Damrish (Daveed Diggs), two art stars on opposing ends of their career arcs.

As they bicker and flatter emptily, the dynamics between them begin to crystallize: all are in desperate need to secure their place in the backstabbing art-house hierarchy. It doesn’t take much of a leap to see Gilroy is skewering the pretentiousness of his own industry, and the clever jabs land squarely: Bryson brags he glued the cereal nuggets on “Froot Loops Hippo,” and a bitter Piers complains that today’s art looks like ink smeared by balloons (a shot at Jeff Koons, who has made millions on sculptures resembling balloon animals).

But when an elderly shut-in neighbor of Josephina’s dies, leaving an apartment full of disturbing and compelling paintings, the film takes a John Carpenter-esqe turn, and Velvet‘s hand gets shaky.  Through some clumsy exposition, we learn the artist suffered horrific abuse, followed by criminal insanity, followed by work that is to die for — literally.

While Gilroy’s satiric shots at consumerism and criticism keep the film afloat (Morf, ever the critic, is mortified by the color of a coffin during a funeral ceremony), the gruesome deaths that befall those who profit off the dead artist make Velvet feel like a haute Final Destination. The deaths are increasingly clever, but the second half of the movie feels like a paint-by-numbers chiller.

Velvet never takes itself as seriously as its artists do, which keeps the film, ultimately, outrageous and enjoyable. And cinematographer Robert Elswit’s shots of Los Angeles’ nighttime skylines are more picturesque than the overpriced art for sale.

But by the time the final body drops, Velvet  plays like a horror flick sequel: The concept is fun, though still derivative of the clever original.