3 ms·

Steven Soderbergh Says It’s Time to Tear the Streaming Model Down to the Studs

5 points by adrian_mrd 3y ago

Iulioh 3y ago
The quote in the middle of the article Most of your recent output has been for streaming. What do you see as the importance of the theatrical business? I certainly think in cultural terms it's necessary. It's a good thing. It's a good thing for people to go out and see movies together. I think it's a collective good. For people to go out and experience art together in numbers, I think is a good thing. It also provides a potential windfall that doesn't exist in the streaming world, which is you make a movie, and it blows up the way these two movies just blew up over the weekend. It's great that Stranger Things blows up, and it means people are on Netflix instead of somewhere else, and it may result in some signups, but it doesn't bring the kind of pure cash windfall that a movie that makes a billion-and-a-half-dollars does. And so that's the problem. If you're a streamer, you have a show that hit; once everybody has seen it, it's just sitting there. It's not throwing off any more revenue because you're not selling it to anybody else anymore. That is a sort of mathematical chink in the streaming platform economic model. And the same goes for a hit TV show. The inability to really monetize your monster successes, I think is a problem.
- cubefox 3y ago
  The dominance of streaming platforms like Netflix are the problem here. Everything is sold in a package as a subscription service. If we had just classical VoD, then people would pay for each film separately. Like four bucks to stream the movie in a three day period within the next 30 days. That's like classical movie renting. Or like going to a movie theater, just cheaper.
  - ThisIsMyAltFace 3y ago
    Amazon does exactly this
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Yes, and many others too. But most people seem to use subscriptions instead.
      - Iulioh 3y ago
        And that's just a price thing I simply won't pay 10€ for a tv series I would binge in 3 days while in background
        cubefox 3y ago
        That's unfortunate. It would have cost way more before streaming.
        Iulioh 3y ago
        The point is that you don't have to compete with low production budget TV anymore , you have to compete with high quality, limitless and free youtube videos Your value proposition has to be good. Cinema is still around because it offers a good experience and exclusivity ( while you can see a film online the day after it came out of the cinema the quality is really bad)

5 points by adrian_mrd 3y ago

The quote in the middle of the article Most of your recent output has been for streaming. What do you see as the importance of the theatrical business? I certainly think in cultural terms it's necessary. It's a good thing. It's a good thing for people to go out and see movies together. I think it's a collective good. For people to go out and experience art together in numbers, I think is a good thing. It also provides a potential windfall that doesn't exist in the streaming world, which is you make a movie, and it blows up the way these two movies just blew up over the weekend. It's great that Stranger Things blows up, and it means people are on Netflix instead of somewhere else, and it may result in some signups, but it doesn't bring the kind of pure cash windfall that a movie that makes a billion-and-a-half-dollars does. And so that's the problem. If you're a streamer, you have a show that hit; once everybody has seen it, it's just sitting there. It's not throwing off any more revenue because you're not selling it to anybody else anymore. That is a sort of mathematical chink in the streaming platform economic model. And the same goes for a hit TV show. The inability to really monetize your monster successes, I think is a problem.

cubefox 3y ago
The dominance of streaming platforms like Netflix are the problem here. Everything is sold in a package as a subscription service. If we had just classical VoD, then people would pay for each film separately. Like four bucks to stream the movie in a three day period within the next 30 days. That's like classical movie renting. Or like going to a movie theater, just cheaper.
- ThisIsMyAltFace 3y ago
  Amazon does exactly this
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Yes, and many others too. But most people seem to use subscriptions instead.
    - Iulioh 3y ago
      And that's just a price thing I simply won't pay 10€ for a tv series I would binge in 3 days while in background
      - cubefox 3y ago
        That's unfortunate. It would have cost way more before streaming.
        Iulioh 3y ago
        The point is that you don't have to compete with low production budget TV anymore , you have to compete with high quality, limitless and free youtube videos Your value proposition has to be good. Cinema is still around because it offers a good experience and exclusivity ( while you can see a film online the day after it came out of the cinema the quality is really bad)