While the streaming wars may continue to heat up, some of the most interesting news this week was over on the film side of the industry, with one new release tracking to a potentially record breaking opening and one industry changing app calling it a close. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of streaming service news courtesy of new players like Apple and Wal-Mart to give you your weekly fill.
Dirty John Finds Its Season Two Subjects
When Bravo ordered the popular podcast Dirty John to series there were questions about how they would continue the show. It was sold as an anthology because humans are sick and podcasts don’t become popular unless real people get killed in them, so there wasn’t exactly an opportunity to continue John’s story into the future. When the show’s final episode received a massive 0.59 rating in the 18-49 demographic, it was clear that the show must go on. And go on it will, now that creator Alexandra Cunningham has found her new subjects. Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story will move over to USA with stars Amanda Peet and Christian Slater taking on the roles of Betty Broderick and her husband Dan. The new season will follow a perfect couple that eventually goes crazy and either murders somebody or gets murdered themselves, because we’re all sick in the head and need our true-crime murder fix. According to Cunningham, this is a subject she’s wanted to write about for a long time and, although it’s an anthology, the writers will still incorporate the elements of “twisted love” and “coercive control” that were the main themes of the original season.
Apple Announces Details For Its Streaming Service
How big was Apple’s reveal of its new streaming service? Roku’s stock dropped 12% the next day. With a November 1 date, a $5 a month price tag and several high profile new shows exclusive to the service, there’s no doubt plenty of people will sign up to try out Apple’s Netflix competitor. The launch shows will include adult series See, The Morning Show, Dickinson, For All Mankind, children’s shows Helpsters, Snoopy in Space and Ghostwriter as well as a documentary feature and an Oprah book-club. The shows will launch with three episodes and then go weekly. So in the first month you can expect between 50-60 hours of content. Apple’s biggest concern will be seasonal churn. Will audiences renew their subscription when they can binge all the content in two or three weekends?
Disney+ is just around the corner and will have access to 202 hours and 24 minutes of content from The Simpsons alone plus thousands of hours from the Disney vault of classic films and TV shows. Future streaming services from WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal snapped up streaming rights to shows like Friends and The Office to try and stack their catalogs to keep people on the hook. While other streamers seem to want to imitate Netflix, Apple looks to be going for the HBO approach of quality of quantity. Considering HBO Now has a retention rate of 47% compared to Netflix’s 93%, only time will tell if that’s the right decision for Apple.
Game-Changing MoviePass Shuts Down Service
After disrupting the entire cinema business and forcing theater chains to create competing monthly ticket services, MoviePass finally came to an end over the weekend. The service launched a monthly subscription in 2012 that used a mobile app with a prepaid credit card that allowed users to select a movie and then use the card to purchase their ticket at the theater. In 2017, MoviePass dropped its price to $10 a month and its subscriber base exploded to 3 million people who were more than willing to part with their data in exchange for a Netflix-esque cinema going option. Unfortunately MoviePass’s parent company Helios and Matheson couldn’t monetize user data enough to offset the losses it was taking on each ticket purchased. Eventually AMC and Regal launched competing services that may not have been as affordable, but they were reliable. And that’s all it took for many users to switch over.
Joker is Tracking For Another Mega October Opening Weekend
Falling right between summer and the start of awards season, October used to be the month Hollywood reserved for its horror movies and leftover summer action fare. When Gravity opened to $55 million five years ago, that all changed. Since then, October has been rife with massive openings for movies like The Martian and A Star is Born with two of the month’s highest debuts coming last year when Venom and Halloween opened to $80 and $76 million respectively. The tracking has just come in on Joker and it doesn’t look like things are changing anytime soon with the new DC Comics pic showing the potential to make up to $90 million when it premieres on October 4. While the movie may not open as high as expected once word of mouth gets around that it’s more Taxi Driver and less The Dark Knight, it’s still exciting to see this much buzz for a fresh take on material that studios tend to remake with a similar template. This proves that the filmgoing audience is excited about seeing something new and they are more than willing to come out in droves when a filmmaker delivers.
Wal-Mart’s Vudu Launches Original Programming and Family Functions
Wal-Mart’s streaming service Vudu has always tried to separate itself from competitors by differentiating itself from the pack. Instead of a monthly fee for unlimited programming, Vudu offers one app to manage all of your digital rentals and purchases with almost every title available. It then began offering free, ad-supported films and TV shows .The service has recently added two new features it hopes will bring in more viewers: artificial intelligence and Michael Keaton remakes. A new short-form series based on Mr. Mom debuted over the weekend with episodes available weekly to either purchase or watch for free with ads. The second innovation is “Family Play,” a new option that uses a mixture of human tagging and algorithms to automatically skip objectionable content so that viewers can effectively choose their own ratings for a movie. While the initial reaction to this news may be one of objection (what content creator wants to give his or her audience the ability to edit the movie they’re watching?), it should be noted that this is an old practice. Studios routinely made directors film multiple takes of R-rated movies so they could have edits to sell to airplanes and network television. If you’ve ever wondered why that movie you chose on Hulu seems pretty tame, it’s because you’re probably watching the FX basic cable cut.