Netflix Flexes
My takeaway from Bird Box is that if Netflix wants to make any of their original content one of the most-watched media events of the year, they can do it, regardless of the quality of the content itself.<p>All it takes is for them to slip it in to people&#x27;s &quot;custom, curated&quot; lists at a higher frequency, and maybe do a little subtle social-media engineering on Reddit&#x2F;Facebook, and bam: instant box office smash of a derivative film with a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes.<p>That&#x27;s a huge &quot;flex&quot;.  Big studios could pump hundreds of millions into a decent film and still have it flop.  Netflix can take a B-movie and make it a sensation with relative ease.  No wonder every game in town is trying to break into this model.  Why invest millions on a potential flop when you can engineer one with 75% accuracy whenever you wish?<p>(though maybe I&#x27;m being just a bit too paranoid here. I have to admit some of the Bird Box magic stems from its intriguing concept. guerilla marketing doesn&#x27;t work so well if what you&#x27;re selling doesn&#x27;t seem too interesting)<p>edit: people are debating the idea of &quot;box office smash&quot; here.  I didn&#x27;t use that phrase to emphasize direct earnings as a result of the film (which is &quot;free&quot; to watch if you pay for a subscription).  The article addresses this:<p>&gt; Secondly, and relatedly, Netflix is counting on subscription revenue. To that end, producing a piece of content that 58% of its subscriber base viewed in a single month is by definition a triumph (and yes, worth ~$700 million).<p>The idea is that Netflix was able to coerce <i>more than half</i> of its subscribers to watch this film.  That&#x27;s crazy.  The result, as we see in the article, is a tidal-wave of Bird Box achieving near-meme status.  How does that feel to someone who does not have a Netflix subscription?  What big joke&#x2F;story are they missing out on?  For only $14.99 a month, they can win social acceptance by being &quot;in the know&quot; of the current big thing.