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Netflix To Start Creating Original Content
olsmeister writes "Netflix may be known for offering some of our favorite TV and movie streams, but the company is about to step up its game and begin offering original content. Netflix has allegedly outbid a number of major cable networks for a new drama series produced by and starring Kevin Spacey called House of Cards, and may be about to close a deal at more than $100 million, according to a report on Deadline.com."
"MPAA Sues Netflix, Claims to Own Patent on "Monetization of Serialized Entertainment Video via Broadcast Medium""
Sounds good to me! depending on the success of this, a very potent competitor to the cable TV racket could be realized.
I can't believe that i took this long for an organization to show original content over the Internet considering there were companies in the late '90s that tried to offer an Internet based substitute for tv. Hulu needs to start offering some original content(to bad they dont have deeper pockets)
I want this too succeed so bad - I'd consider watching it even if it sucked.
The age of television is coming to an end. I've waited for this day for a long, long time. Now let's wait and see how long it takes Netflix to start showing ads...
I don't have a Netflix account. I never had any motivation to get a Netflix account. But if Netflix bought up the rights to produce some new episodes of old cult classics such as Firefly, Stargate (SGU does not count as part of that series), Earth 2, Rugrats, Doug, Transformers cartoons, and, hell, maybe a new good Star Trek series, then I would seriously consider subscribing to an account.
In other words Netflix, current networks are broadcasting crap, crap, and more crap. Broadcast something not-crap, and you might get a few more subscribers.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Not a bad choice. Spacey plays the harried straight man better than anyone, so he could accomodate a lot of different concepts. $100 million is pretty rich though.
What they really need to do is make it so that your instant queue can have directories or something. For a company that says they were planning on the direct stream thing all along, they sure don't have that sophisticated of a saved queue.
What would be really cool if there was an area were people could submit their own films and shorts and netflix users could rate them. Obviously they would be in the Not Rated section. I feel like I reached the end of all their streaming stuff so I wouldn't mind seeing a bunch of dumb shows people make. It wouldn't be too hard to make something like Trailer Park boys. Netflix could also make it so only valid accounts can submit content and perhaps after a period of time has passed. This way it would weed out spammers somewhat, or at least Netflix would make money off the spammers.
I would rather they put effort into getting new TV shows up faster than having original content. I would much prefer watching new episodes of The Office, commercial free, than see some brand new series whose main selling point is the fact that it's netflix-exclusive.
They did it recently, with Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, where they would put the show on Netflix mere hours after it aired on Starz. It was great.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix: "Through a division called Red Envelope Entertainment, Netflix licensed and distributed independent films such as Born into Brothels and Sherrybaby. As of late 2006, Red Envelope Entertainment also expanded into producing original content with filmmakers such as John Waters. Netflix announced plans to close Red Envelope Entertainment in 2008, in part to avoid competition with its studio partners."
There's a reason I don't watch TV anymore, the creativity of the medium is approaching zero. Movies are pretty well already at zero, unless you indulge in the independent cinema, which is still capable of surprising you.
Will Netflix go with risky indy thinking or will it hedge with Tried and True Copy-Cat entertainment?
Someone else let me know, 'K? I'll be outside watching for rattlesnakes along the trail.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This move puts Netflix in even more direct competition with traditional broadcasting/media companies than ever before--as if NBC-Comcast wasn't already looking to throttle YouTube and Netflix traffic to hell and back. Real net neutrality seems like it aligns with Netflix's business model--they may become a true defender of how many people here think the internet "should" work on top of their apparent desire to be a true independent alternative to old media.
Is there a negative here that I'm not seeing? Does one of the big media companies secretly own Netflix?
I was wondering how many comments it would take before someone raised the "BRING BACK FIREFLY!!!" banner.
Earth 2? Really? Really. And not a single mention of Babylon 5? Ugh.
Netflix isn't stupid. They want advertising revenue just like every other network. Why else would they do this? $100 million is a lot of money, if you are going to just "give it away" to Netflix subscribers.
My guess is that the show will have ads. If you don't want ads, you can pay extra. Never mind that you are ALREADY paying for Netflix.
Netflix had to shutter its own entertainment division, Red Envelope, a few years ago. It was just a small studio that probably never outbid a much larger one for the indie films they invested in, but they were competing with their own suppliers. It's not clear to me how this is different, although I suppose the three years since it closed is a long time ago.
Also, doesn't this raise the issue of Netflix both producing and being the main distributor for this series? It seems that this show is only going to be offered through Netflix. Having content exclusive not only to their competitors but their suppliers seems foolish.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/netflix_pr.html
http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2008/07/netflix-closing.html
I have found lots to see already and they seem to be adding more content all the time. It works perfectly in Canuckistan for me. $8. a month is well worth it, especially if you have little kids. There's lots of kid stuff and I love the fact that there is no commercials and they keep track of which episodes you've watched.
They do have their fair share of stinker movies too, but I also like to support their efforts. Hopefully this will be the tv of the future.(Cause the damn satellite sure sucks)
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Adding the firefly episodes to netflix is completely different thanproducing new episodes.
What?! You mean, if Netflix spent a few more tens of millions of dollars just to purchase the rights to some old shows, not to mention the marginal costs associated with making them available on their platform, you might be willing to consider giving them $8 a month?!
Hold on, I've got the CEO of Netflix on the line. He's obviously very intrigued by your generous offer; I think you guys just need a contract to make this commitment official, and he'll get his top people on this right away!
I won't be watching that piece of fei-oo. Finish Firefly. I can kill you with my brain.
I love these types of comments: "If random company spends tons of money doing everything I want, I would consider paying them a small fee." The implication is the poster would also consider not paying for any of it. Not the most persuasive of arguments.
B5 had an ending.
It's only the 'spin-off' shows that didn't, and good luck getting the cast back to make any of them :(
The biggest problem for some of the shows you mentioned is that the brain dead morons at the networks moved them unpredictably around to different time slots during a season and sometimes showed them out of order. It seems to be a repeated strategy to strangle ratings and kill a show.
With Netflix, all of that BS goes away: you can watch when you want and in the order you want.
He was probably just using a passive, unassuming, meek voice.
(SGU does not count as part of that series)
You may jest, but if I recall, the producers of SGU haven't entirely given up, and are looking for someone other than SyFy to possibly pick up the series. I think they even mentioned "alternative venues" or something like that. Really, even though it's not your fav, the way they've picked up in this last season, SGU may be a great fit for Netflix.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Babylon 5 is a completed story. Ditto Farscape. As much as I would love to see more of both, they're done. They told the story they were meant to.
Now, if you want to do something else in the same universe... Crusade, for example...
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
Is nothing sacred? Why do these shows have to be re-made? House of Cards was a masterpiece and I fear that too much will be lost in translation to an American setting. Please don't talk to me about The Office. The original series looked like a documentary, now they've completely given up on that by bringing in too many camera angles and taking the documentary look away from it. Losing that essential element makes it difficult to watch.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The implication is the poster would also consider not paying for any of it. Not the most persuasive of arguments.
Well that's not true. I've already paid for most of it already. I own the boxed sets of DVD's of many of the shows I listed. My problem is that no companies are funding the development of new content that I like. So I don't pay current companies money because they don't provide anything of value to me. In other words, I am not one of their customers. The point of my post was to illustrate that there is probably some market out there for folks like me that are willing to fork over cash for the development of certain types of content (cult classics). The fact that no company is currently creating that product is the only reason I am not spending money on it.
The content that Netflix currently provides is not worth the value of a subscription to me. If Netflix starts providing content that is more valuable to me, then I would start purchasing their content. I don't think my position is as unreasonable as you seem to make it out to be. Don't let that stop you from making shit up so that you have a soap box to rant from:
The implication is the poster would also consider not paying for any of it.
The implication of your post is that you are a pissed off, bitter, lonely person. See! I can make shit up too! Yay!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I would watch it. If it airs globally. I'm in Europe. If thats ok. I can't wait four years before it airs over here. I suppose so, because this is original content and releasing it globaly would only be in your benefit. Yay! Yay? Or is this wishful thinking..
Hivemind harvest in progress..
How about you add streaming to all the stuff you currently have first.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
as no sight, sound, thought or movement is truly original by nature's reckoning. we made all the ones here, so they're copied onto media over&over. what is relatively new, is the current coin of the realm, & the associated subscription/hostage usery & media plans available to us, although neither is original, by any measure. the holycost so far; more than any of us is able to imagine, & growing.
You could buy a good deal of Akamai mirrors and storage/power/cooling for 100 million. Then digitize some more decent shows and movies instead of mostly older content.
Until then netflix does not exist.
Buy the rights to firefly and pump that shit out!
"Consider" is the word you used. Perhaps I was wrong to assume you knew what it meant.
Agreed I'm surprised it took a whole 3 minutes.
Nooooooo......
Not Earth 2.
ARK II !!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_II
The Wire, Season 6!
They could buy up the rights to do something new, and then produce complete trash. Owning the rights to any of those shows doesn't guarantee the resulting new production will be worth a damn - sets, actors, crews, locations, budgets, effects - all could very easily change, and those changes aren't guaranteed to be improvements on the originals that you so fondly remember.
I'd rather they go find new, interesting stories and focus on telling them well, rather than suffer through two years of "A FIREFLY CLASS VESSEL DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT INSIDE, AND THAT'S NOT THE ORIGINAL KAYLEE FRYE! THEY RUINED THE SHOW! DIE NETFLIX DIE!"
I thought someone just bought the rights and the online community was told that there would be no new episodes.... which does suck.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Netflix is simply positioning itself to be acquired by somebody like Comcast (ie Kabletown). By proving they are capable of making these kinds of deals, they suddenly become a bigger player. (The Netflix team has worked pretty hard these last few years and they are ready to retire in big luxury.)
I'll try not to shock you too badly, but the fact is that Netflix gets ALL of its revenue this way. One subscriber at a time. Netflix invests vast sums of capital to pursue new revenue. I've watched a few things on Netflix on my brother's Mac and did not find it quite compelling enough to subscribe. If new Firefly episodes were available I would be all over it. So would many, many more who discovered it on DVD after the fact. Enough to make it worthwhile to Netflix (or Amazon, Hulu, or Apple)? Hell yes!
"House Of Cards" wouldn't be a political black comedy now would it?
original content indeed.
though i wouldn't mind seeing Spacey in the F.U. role.
you can add me to the list of people who found it on DVD after it was cancelled
and to the list of people who would buy new episodes (even at a premium over my current $18/mo netflix sub).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Please help Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes to make The Rikers In Space a real sitcom.
Netflix updates their content nearly daily... might be worth taking another look at what they offer. Their streaming stuff is good enough that we don't subscribe to cable any more. OTA for news and sports, otherwise everything is Netflix or on discs we own (that I ripped to our media center)
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Cool. Assuming they will hold Copyrights, will they allow us to watch it on GNU/Linux?
/. seems to be off by a ways here. Netflix already offers original content. There is a Zach Galifinakis special that is streaming and put out by Netflix.
How old? http://www.imdb.com/company/co0144901/
Producing content since 2005
The world is how you make it
People pay much more for Cable Television, and it's chock full of advertising too.
An important difference is that the cable company has to build and maintain huge networks of lines all over the place. Netflix doesn't.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
in 3,2,1...
Netflix has all of Stargate, Sliders, Firefly, earth2, and many other things..
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They don't do streaming to *any* non-locked hardware (there is a linux box with hardware encryption they use as a consumer node). If you run a Linux desktop, so far as Netflix is concerned you can take a flying leap.
It's rather silly. They're afraid we'd take the trouble to capture streams. Well, on rare occasions we might, but if we're paying a monthly to have the movies on demand, why would we bother save for a temporary transfer when we're going to be netless for a while? The bottom line is that they're being brainless, spineless, willing orifices for no practical reason.
-- TWZ
But if Netflix bought up the rights to produce some new episodes of old cult classics such as Firefly, Stargate...hell, maybe a new good Star Trek series, then I would seriously consider subscribing to an account.
The reboot is from scratch and it costs a lot of money up front.
The original sets and props have been sold or destroyed. The cast and production crew are retired or dead or have long since moved on to other projects.
Production values of the original may be five to twenty-five years out-of-date or more.
That is good enough for the audience of a Star Trek fan flick - but not good enough for the paying customers on an HBO subscription plan.
Kind of reminds me of the path that movie channels like HBO, Showtime and AMC took. They all started out as just showing movies, but began to differentiate from each other by producing exclusive original content. And a lot that original content has been high quality stuff, like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad. Maybe this will be the same way that distributors of online content will start to compete for customers?
How do they keep track of which episodes you've watched? You can only remove an entire season at a time.. not one by one.
I am in Canada, so it may be different from the states. I don't have anywhere to bookmark things I'd like to watch other than in Firefox. But once I've started watching something, Netflix puts it in my history which I can access anytime. The last three shows I watched are displayed at the top of the home page and there is a link to access everything I've already watched or am in the process of watching.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Episodes in a season you've seen will be marked as such. Also, if you start one but don't finish it, it will tell you how much you've seen and give you the option of starting where you left off. At least on the Xbox 360 and Sony TV clients, I assume the others (that I haven't used) have similar functionality.
We can forget the Peacekeeper Wars ever happened right. I mean please it was so bad with the only redeeming quality being the chance to see the worm-hole weapon in action.
Yeah! Netflix should think out of the box and plan to create additional opportunity. Now the big Amazon already step forward to eat Netflix's market share.
Johnson from
Idiots! Should have bought the rights to Firefly.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
I live outside their area of service, but last time I checked it required either specific supported hardware appliances or Microsoft Silverlight, which is only available on Microsoft Windows and Apple's OS X.
Why is /. showing such interest?
Summer Glau, the unpredictable River Tam in Firefly, has proven to be the kiss of death for any show she works. Her latest role as "Orwell" in The Cape pretty much morphed this from theory to fact. Although I like Summer Glau, she brings dark clouds of doubt to any project she works on. However, I do think her role in Firefly was legitimate...Firefly was the victim of network morons. And I think she's hot...in a waif-ish, I-want-to-do-my-best-friend's-sister sort of way.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
You may jest, but if I recall, the producers of SGU haven't entirely given up, and are looking for someone other than SyFy to possibly pick up the series. I think they even mentioned "alternative venues" or something like that. Really, even though it's not your fav, the way they've picked up in this last season, SGU may be a great fit for Netflix.
I don't get how people crap on syfy for canceling a series that they funded for 10 years. (I know you didn't actually say anything negative and that I am just rambling.)
24 season 24. Just skip to season 24. It's needed for the symmetry.
I don't have a Netflix account. I never had any motivation to get a Netflix account. But if Netflix bought up the rights to produce some new episodes of old cult classics such as Firefly, Stargate (SGU does not count as part of that series), Earth 2, Rugrats, Doug, Transformers cartoons, and, hell, maybe a new good Star Trek series, then I would seriously consider subscribing to an account.
In other words Netflix, current networks are broadcasting crap, crap, and more crap. Broadcast something not-crap, and you might get a few more subscribers.
No fucking kidding. The best example of such fucking shit is the biggest loser. All it has is a bunch of fat-fucks trying to lose weight then gains it back later. Why the fuck should there be a fucking show in order for fat fucks to lose their fucking weight. We as a society need to stop giving into those fat fucks and force them to either fucking lose weight or fucking die. One way to do that is to have a fucking weight limit on entry to anything. Oh, you weigh 300 fucking pounds and you ar 5 ft 9? Then you are not allowed entry into any fucking supermarket. If you fucking die oh fucking well
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME OR WASTE YOUR GODDAMNED MODPOINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE
OR BETTER YET GO SLIT YOUR FUCKING WRISTS FAT FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd rather the content creators and the distribution stay separate. This goes even for companies that I enjoy such as Netflix. There is just too much conflict of interest down the road when one company is both.