Monday, August 16, 2010

Want Some More Real Numbers?

I don't have 'em. But I do have some more "word on the street".
So apparently Netflix wants a "backlog" of a thousand "orders" (or people queuing) a particular title in order to stock (drum roll please) 200 of that title. Now, of course there's not way for them to actually get a backlog of 1000 people queuing a picture they don't actually carry so they apparently measure that by seeing what kind of press/blog interest there is in a given picture. Not exactly a science, more of an art to that.
Netflix has no real pressure to carry indy titles, so they tend not to. I mean, are you really going to quit Netflix if they don't have a copy of Clonehunter? I wish you would, but you won't.
So Netflix gets paid every month, in perpetuity, by its subscribers. And although you should belong to Blockbuster's competing service -- which still carries indy titles -- we/you/I aren't.
And 200 titles... that's what? $1400 or thereabouts? You're not paying your visual effects people out of that. Heck, you're not buying lunch for twelve days out of that.
So yeah. When your friends ask if your movie will be on Netflix, say "NO F&*^%&'IN WAY!
The art to the Japanese version of Solar Vengeance. The movie is called "Terminator Planet" in Japan.
I mean, unless Netflix offers to buy your movie. Then yeah.

Update: be sure to check out Kangas' post about Netflix - it's downright scary.

2 comments:

Kangas said...

I don't know if you saw my blog about Netflix, but it's a COMPLETE ripoff. If you don't have(or want, in my case) a distributor, they'll offer you one, who will send you one of the worst-case contracts I have ever seen(and I've seen some bad ones).

That post, for those interested, is here:
http://foc-log.blogspot.com/2010/03/word-about-netflix-victory-multimedia.html

Andrew Bellware said...

Yes, that was an excellent post about Netflix.
Man, this business is freakin' hard.