What’s the first thing you think of when someone says “Netflix”? ‘Stranger Things’? ‘The squid game’? ‘BoJack Horseman’? Chances are you’re not thinking of ‘Red Alert’, ‘Blind’ or ‘The Invisible Agent’. And it is that, no matter how successful it has been in the field of Oscar cinema and festivals (although the statuette resists it for the moment), It lacks something that its most direct rivals do have: a franchise.
Not even a sequel sneaks in
Disney+ is basically a conglomerate of franchises that we could spend two years naming, from ‘High school musical’ to ‘The Avengers’. HBO Max, after the purchase of Paramount, more of the same: ‘Mission impossible’, ‘John Wick’, ‘Mad Max’, DC superheroes… To Netflix, which, at least for now, has not bought any great study in low hours, he has no choice but to try to find your own film saga on your own.
And, to get has achieved great audience milestones. Millions of households have gone online to watch “Tyler Rake” or “The Old Guard,” but they haven’t become viral hits. The public sees them because they are on the cover of Netflix and they have famous actors, but no one talks about them. They do not create affection or the need to continue seeing more adventures, there is no community formed around them, nor are panels set up at Comic-Con to meet their authors.
As much as the streaming service is quick to confirm a sequel, there’s no fan base waiting for it and no one cheering about it. And, furthermore, the second part takes so long to come out, if it does come out (remember the promised sequels to ‘Bright’ and ‘Blind’?), that the possible hype is further diluted.
In fact, the few sagas that have worked well for him, such as ‘Enola Holmes’ or ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’, never stopped be original films purchased from other studios. The big N is having a hard time finding the exact key of the fandom and trusts big names, like the Russo brothers, who then offer the flattest possible content, as if avoiding their own personality: any pretended Netflix blockbuster is interchangeable with the one next to itand it is a very big problem.
Amortizing love
Paradoxically, although the company wants to strengthen its supposed action sagas, where it has really made a name for itself is in the sagas of teen sitcoms, Christmas nonsense and steamy love tapes, like ‘My first kiss’, ‘Princess change’, ‘365 days’ or ‘To all the boys I’ve loved before’. But Netflix wants more. He wants his own ‘Star wars’, which can divide into sequels, series, video games and everything that is necessary. And so far they have only achieved it in episodic format.
When the end of ‘Stranger things’ with season 5 was announced, the company quickly clarified that the franchise would go on with spin-offs and perhaps the occasional movie: it is Netflix’s desperate attempt to get the approval of the audience at the moment they need it most. The tactic is already being replicated in ‘The Squid Game’, ‘The Witcher’ and ‘The Paper House’: local versions, spin-offs, sequels… If something works, you have to get as much juice out of it as possible. And the imposted projects are smelled.
In addition, it is still not exactly what the company is looking for. in his day managed to turn around the image of a “Netflix movie” thanks to a fabulous marketing campaign and the release of movies like ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ or ‘Roma’, but the search for a franchise like a chimera or an oasis that will save the furniture alone damages the reputation of the house’s productswhich are rightly called “forgettable” or, directly, “unworthy”.
Unhinged by the franchise
Nor do we have to be catastrophic: Netflix has already found the occasional franchise in conditions, of those that can condition the subscription. But for the most part they are films rescued from oblivion or from movie theaters to create new sequels: ‘Chicken run’, spy kids‘Super detective in Hollywood’, ‘Wallace and Gromit’ or ‘Daggers in the back’ will try to create notoriety and revalue the brand.
But, while they continue hoping to find that saga that is really going to get subscriptions, Netflix will continue trying to find their goose that lays the golden eggs with video game and anime adaptations (‘Bioshock’, ‘Gundam’) while they continue pampering (or at least trying) their plot for festival and auteur films. It is not easy to do these juggling when the general perception of your audience is still, at least, improvable.
If Netflix continues to seek to be relevant in the current audiovisual ecosystem with action movies without personality and without a pre-established franchise name behind it, it is not going to help it maintain the number of subscriptions, much less get new ones.
Nobody becomes a member to see ‘The invisible agent’, no matter how Russo it is, because the word of mouth is not good, if there is any at all, nor is there a rush to see it. The great challenge of streaming is that “the latest Netflix” has its own name for prevent its most important franchise from being… Netflix itself.