@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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The numbers worked out until April. Then… not so much.

I’m not just talking about Netflix though. Hollywood has always tried to get as much mileage out of existing IPs as possible.

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.

Netflix has it’s own fairly particular business model. The service has a VERY long history of creating shows, ordering pilots, and then killing them after a couple seasons. This is because pilots are cheap and renewing actors is expensive. This allows it to ‘fish’ for breakout winners like Stranger Things without having to invest. But it also does long-term harm (like a lot of corporate practices - its always short profits in putting $s in their eyes), not only because it antagonizes the viewers, but because it leaves a graveyard catalogue rather than one of long-running complete shows. The latter are its most valuable properties by miles. See all the noise about losing things like Friends and The Office. These are what keep people on a service, not the headliners, because they’re reliable choices when you don’t know what you want to watch.

The ‘Fandom IP’ shows are a different (if related) beast. They’re shifting the investment toward the cost of the IP, presumably to offset lesser near for marketing or other factors. But that really does limit their budgets elsewhere, as we see with Sandman (where it’s great, but they say they can’t afford it), and see with everything else where they staff with what I can only assume are very cheap nepotism hires (don’t quote me here too literally, I haven’t researched every individual credited name, but there’s obviously a failure to curate the right people).
.
All of this is a product of the peak Marvel (and arguably, GoT) era, with everyone chasing what is clearly an already burst bubble. Witcher, WoT and Rings of Power all chasing the fantasy portion. It’s definitely an assumption that the ‘fans will always show up,’ ignoring that it hasn’t been true since the collapse of Star Wars (a lot of talk how Andor is doing very mediocre #s despite being very well reviewed - the fans are simply gone), the crash & burn of DC, etc. Netflix got its IP toys taken away, so they’re buying what they can, but it’s got them scraping in some cases, going for deep fandoms without wide public appeal. That latter factor probably makes it more likely you’ll fail to get the necessary talent when you hire from the general, cheap pool.

There’s also the element of fan-baiting and outrage culture shit that I don’t want to derail on, but it’s very much a thing. Want free publicity? Intentionally antagonize your fans!

@faraday

The numbers worked out until April. Then… not so much.

Netflix used to have no competition. It was the disruptor, and it was ubiquitous. Most people just accepted it as a permanent thing and never considered churn. Now they’ve got a lot of competition. Very serious competition, from the IP holders and owners of everything they used to license. They are very much not fine. It may not change their behavior, because practices like this get ingrained in the corporate culture (unrelated to THIS incident, Netflix’s is independently super toxic, with peer evaluations that cause lots of back-stabbing, apparently). The streaming wars are a big thing and it’s pretty likely things will look nothing like where they started by the time they shake out.

It’s a numbers game. Seems to me the numbers must work out in their favor most times or they’d have stopped by now.

Unless, and hear me out on this one, they’re morons.

At that point just do your own thing, Netflix. Save some money from an existing IP. Then let it stand or fall on its own merits.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s maddening when they do this, but I think you’re missing the business side of why.

Like, if I slap a recognized name on something – even if I botch it/change it, a lot of the fans are going to watch it anyway.

Vocal fans make noise about hating the changes, but there’s often an equal or greater number of quiet fans that just don’t care. So say you end up with 50% of fans pissed off, 25% neutral, and 25% loving the changes–that could still be a lot more people watching than any original show would have.

Plus, existing IPs generate buzz, which is basically free marketing, which can get even people who weren’t originally fans to watch.

And sometimes deviating from the details of an original property can work out great - look at RDM’s BSG for instance. So a lot of it is going to boil down to the salesmanship of the show-runner and their pitch.

It’s a numbers game. Seems to me the numbers must work out in their favor most times or they’d have stopped by now.

Because we have eyes. We’ve seen the show. It’s bad, in the same way all of these streaming IP shows are bad. Netflix is just trying to protect its image (and cratered stock price).

What I don’t get is… Netflix pays money to buy these IPs. They’re definitely not cheaper than going with its own original home-grown content. The reason they’d do that is to take advantage of an existent fandom, and essentially land viewers right out of the box - plus extra ‘free’ marketing from those fans spreading the good word, etc.

If they’ll do that for Witcher (or Halo, Silent Hill, Wheel of Time, etc) why on earth wouldn’t they attach people to this project who at least care about that IP to protect the investment made?

So if I think the Witcher books and game are shit so I’ll need to fix them… I’m a bad fucking choice for Netflix to make as a showrunner. That’s the sum of it, end of story. I’m just going to infuriate the existing fans who are the point of buying this thing out in the first place.

Nowhere is the difference more plain than House of the Dragon. The folks running the show love the book. You can tell; it lives and breathes Fire and Blood. They made adjustments, pruned some characters and greatly expanded others (Viserys comes to mind) but the reverence to the original material is all over.

And it shows. Ever since it launched its subreddit (which, if you know anything, subreddits tend to be pools of vile toxicity once a series is going the wrong way) has been goddamn… admiring it. People post their artwork of cool scenes, they applaud their favorite actors, cheer for how good the casting choices were for characters whose actors switched in a time-jump. The fans are happy - and they explain to each other how the changes made were for a reason instead of just protesting them.

Compare this to the absolute shitshow of Wheel of Time. Ugh.

At that point just do your own thing, Netflix. Save some money from an existing IP. Then let it stand or fall on its own merits.

It’s definitely being floated is that Cavill is ‘too busy’ to do it, or that streaming is too crappy for him as a big star now, etc. Various stuff to make it his fault and not Netflix. That’s very convenient narrative for Netflix, a company that is not exactly having the best year.

His schedule is 100% going to get busier (he may well end up as James Bond, too). But it’s not a pre-existing conflict. No way. This movie wasn’t even going to happen before ~2 weeks ago. Cavill was blacklisted under Hamada for the ‘insult’ of negotiating. He was never going to be Superman until that leadership changed. Right now, it’s not clear they have anyone attached besides Cavill. It’s still in pre-production. There’s no shooting schedule.

So the bottom line is that he could have negotiated it if he cared to. That he didn’t care to says everything. At the outset, he treated this role the way Ryan Reynolds treats Deadpool (down to releasing test footage.) He could have been getting better money doing anything else. But he’s been making noise about the writing going back to when he still had zero chance of ever being Superman. He said he’d do 7 seasons ‘if it stayed true to the books.’ We shouldn’t be surprised.

Because we have eyes. We’ve seen the show. It’s bad, in the same way all of these streaming IP shows are bad. Netflix is just trying to protect its image (and cratered stock price).

Despite all the ‘he just quit because he’s Superman,’ the idea that an actor cannot be in 2 things is just… wrong?

I have no idea what happened in the case of the Witcher, but the idea of an actor bowing out of a project over scheduling conflicts is not at all far-fetched.

It’s not so much because they can’t be in a franchise and another movie at the same time (as you mentioned with Hemsworth), but because of scheduling conflicts.

This is especially true with TV shows, which generally have to shoot a lot more material (8-20 hours for a series vs. 2 for a movie) and thus require a bigger time commitment. If a show is filmed for several months of the year in Canada (or in Europe, as was the case with the Witcher), it may be hard/impractical for someone to do a simultaneous project that’s shooting in Hollywood or elsewhere overseas.

Happens all the time.

I’ve followed most of this stuff (I like the franchise a lot, even play Gwent as my silly computer CCG of choice), and Sapkowski has never seemed very engaged with the secondary fandom. He writes books, considers the books the important part, and sells other rights as a revenue source but doesn’t tend to involve himself.

Famously, his suit toward CDPR was because he thought videogames were silly and sold the Witcher rights assuming the games would fail - and thus took a low flat payment versus royalties. Even though he made his own bed to a degree, Polish law allows for compensation when the discrepancy is so vast (so… they’re way ahead of the US in that regard), and he was allowed to reclaim some additional payments after CDPR became massively successful entirely on the backs of his IP.

His deal with Netflix was well after Witcher had garnered its huge success, so I imagine he got a much better deal this time around. But he never gave CDPR trouble over how his material was used; indeed the very concept of the games essentially requires violating the ending of the books.