Why the Streaming Wars Matter to You
#121: Paramount+, "Pixie," "His Girl Friday," "Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy"
Edition 121:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week’s newsletter: News about streaming services can feel like super technical business talk, but we’ll talk about why it matters to you. Then I’ve got a fun little indie movie to recommend, a fast-talking Cary Grant classic, and the ultimate comfort food TV show (literally). In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” it’s a new era of hidden camera comedies.
The State of the “Streaming Wars”
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Showtime, AppleTV+, and as of last week, Paramount+.
(These are just the major players, there’s also Starz, Epix, Shudder, ESPN+, DC Universe, BET+, The Criterion Channel and like a million more niche offerings.)
There’s so many different streamings services these days, each with its own exclusives and originals, that figuring out what to watch in this seemingly infinite landscape of content is almost easier than finding where to watch it. That multi-step process inevitably involves googling a title to see what service it’s on, trying to remember if you subscribe to that service, then deciding which friend you can reach out to for a password.
It’s not reasonable or even feasible to assume the average consumer can subscribe to all platforms, and likely they can’t carry more than two or three. That scarcity has lead to the “Streaming Wars” for consumers’ dollars and attention.
It’s annoying, no doubt, but ultimately I feel most people regard these “wars” as nothing more than an inconvenience. Just tell me which services I need to pay for and which ones I can skip, and oh are we able to stream that one movie you recommended Matt?
But on a grander scale, these shifting market forces will determine the types of shows and movies all of us will be watching for the next 20 years. When you consider how much cumulative time you or I or anyone will be spending watching that content, it’s a pretty important topic.
Take for example the inevitable decline of movie theaters. AMC announced this week they lost $4.6 Billion in 2020, which on the surface seems like a boring business story. But if the number of movie theaters across the country shrinks drastically, than the economic model for movie distribution changes with it. Maybe mega-blockbusters couldn’t produce a billion dollars at the box office, which would make them less economically viable for the studios to produce, so maybe studios simply stop making them.
Or if streaming platforms want to maximize the time a viewer engages with their platform, then maybe it makes more sense to stretch their story idea into a 10-hour series than a 2-hour movie, which maybe changes the mind of a movie star or director about participating, which maybe makes the difference between good and bad.
Or if data shows that premiering new shows raises subscriber acquisition numbers, maybe more of your favorite shows will get cancelled after one or two seasons.
These are very real and tangible possibilities as a result of these silly “wars.”
Rising above the fray is Netflix, the clear winner of this first generation of competition. Netflix built its audience with the full consent of competitors, who were eager to give away their content for an extra paycheck just a few short years ago. By the time that gravy train ran out, Netflix had become so ubiquitous that “watching Netflix” is a verb used to describe watching any streaming platform. Now with over 205 million subscribers, their platform holds the power to elevate almost anything into a worldwide phenomenon.
Everyone else has to play by a new set of rules: new content brings customers in, and vast libraries keeps them hanging around. It’s a delicate balance.
That is the real reason why this year, even after movie theaters reopen at full capacity, HBO Max is going to release Warner Brothers movies on the same day to streaming. Prior to the announcement the platform had a great library, with decades of HBO classics and the most comprehensive collection of movie classics anywhere, but lacked a way to get people in the door. Enter Wonder Woman 1984, a movie which helped double, yes double, HBO Max’s total subscriber count in Q4 of 2020.
As a result, a ton of people are going to be watching Warner Bros’ massive blockbuster releases like Godzilla vs. King Kong and Dune at home on their iPhone while on the toilet or pretending to work. That reduction in delivery quality has caused at least one high profile director — Christopher “Get Off My Lawn!” Nolan — to no longer make movies for them. Real life consequences.
Every service tells a similar story. Disney+ shouldered its way into the rotation by branding itself as a can’t-miss product for children, amassed 100 million subs at record speed, then became ground zero for the revival of the Star Wars brand and the launch of the new phase of the Marvel not-so-Cinematic Universe.
Peacock may have become a legit contender had it launched with its intended package of Olympics coverage, until the pandemic nixed that. Hulu "has live sports,” as every commercial break for a basketball game this March will remind you. And signing up for NFL coverage is the only reason I stumbled through the backdoor this past week into Paramount+.
Paramount+ is a rebrand of the streaming service formerly known as “CBS All-Access,” owned by the parent company Viacom. Yawn…business stuff. Right?
But let’s say you want to watch Sunday Night Football. Or you’re a fan of one of CBS’ hugely popular shows like NCIS, CSI, Survivor, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, going back to M*A*S*H*, I Love Lucy and Perry Mason. What if you like movie franchises like Star Trek, Indiana Jones, The Godfather, Transformers, or Mission: Impossible.
In time, you’re not going to be able to see any of them ever again without a subscription to Paramount+ (that is unless, as I suspect, that Paramount is angling itself as an acquisition target if the media business continues consolidating). That’s kinda depressing, but perhaps not as depressing as the fact that Paramount’s subscriber acquisition strategy consists of pimping out its goldmine of 1970s-era prestige titles like The Godfather, Grease, Love Story and Fatal Attraction into new series and commissioning revivals of long dead shows like Frazier, Rugrats, iCarly and anything else capable of conjuring the tiniest bit of nostalgia.
Navigating the landscape has never been more difficult, and it’s only going to get harder. Luckily for you, if you’re reading this, you’ve got a field guide here ready to curate and clarify what you need to see and what you’ll hopefully enjoy.
With that said, most of the recommendations for this newsletter are going to be from Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max, which would be my personal top three streamers (although if you’re hooked on 2-day shipping like me, I’d also include Amazon Prime).
Happy streaming!
Something New
Pixie ($VOD): Most people would disregard this small little indie adventure as derivative, but if someone wants to rip off the exact type of movies I love, I’ll more than allow it. The influences of Quentin Tarintino and Guy Ritchie’s gangster movies mixed with pretty obvious vibes from Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá Tambien (which is awesome btw if you haven’t seen it) produce this guy-girl-guy crime caper set in western Ireland. It’s a classic “bag of money” movie, except this time the loot was stolen from a group of drug-smuggling priests and nuns led by Alec Baldwin (doing his best to sport an Irish accent).
In center frame is Olivia Cooke, who I’ve been a massive fan of ever since Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (she’s also great in Sound of Metal and Thoroughbreds). Her magnetic presence is able to carry both the ridiculous humor and buzzy action here, while almost pulling off the pretty kitschy emotional backbone at the same time. She’s surrounded by basically half the goons from “Peaky Blinders” and a handful of other colorful and quirky characters. It’s a super fun movie, even if the non-Cooke characters wear the ambitions of Tarintino/Ritchie ultra-cool like a bad wig. At least check out the trailer, and I’ll bet you’ll want to throw down a couple bucks for on-demand this week.
Something Old
His Girl Friday (1941, Amazon Prime): Oh, you thought Aaron Sorkin dialogue was fast? This Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell comedy machine-guns its dialogue twice as quickly, oftentimes with three or four conversations happening at the same time with each one trying to outdo the others in whit and cleverness. The spine of the story is the famous stage play “The Front Page,” adapted with a gender swap so that Russell’s crack journalist is trying to escape Grant’s manipulative ex-husband/editor both professionally and personally, unfolding on the day of the biggest news event of her career on the eve of her wedding to another man. It’s pure chaos leading to pure comedy, building more and more pressure until the whole thing explodes. The insane pacing preserves the movie for modern audiences, and I think any fans of Sorkin or whitty rom-coms would enjoy this Howard Hawks classic.
Something to Stream
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (CNN’s website): The pandemic has given rise to the term “virtual tourism,” a trend I was eager to make fun of until this past week when Stanley Tucci’s travel show quite literally brought tears to my eyes. Italy’s food and culture is an enthusiasm of mine, and the overwhelming presentation of both here is so bellisimo that it made me want to restart my Italian lessons on Duolingo and look up plane ticket prices on Kayak.
Fans of Anthony Bourdain would offer the critique that this show approaches every city, dish and person it meets with rose-colored glasses, and a good 70% of any given episode is Tucci reacting to every piece of food he puts in his mouth as if its manna from heaven. Still, every bite looks like it IS that good, and the show is more comforting than an authentic Roman bowl of cacio e pepe. Che bello!
Trailer Watch: Bad Trip
Listen, if a 14-year-old sequel to Borat can win multiple Golden Globes and likely snag an Oscar nomination for Best Picture — yes, you heard that right — prepare yourselves for a whole new generation of hidden camera comedies. Nobody is better positioned to take advantage than Eric Andre, whose prank talk show has been pushing the boundaries of comedy for years. Now he teams with Lil Rey Howery and Tiffany Haddish on a road trip through Middle America to capture real people’s shock and discomfort when faced with insane circumstances. I don’t have much stomach for cringe comedy but find myself laughing at it nonetheless.