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      Ted Sarandos Talks About That Stock Drop, Backing Dave Chappelle, and Hollywood Schadenfreude

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      The Netflix executive says he — and the company he helped build — will survive a bout of bad earnings numbers.Maybe it was the tower of seafood sitting before us. Or the Potomac River flowing next to us. Or the fact that Ted Sarandos proposed to his wife, Nicole, on a “touristy booze cruise” under Fourth of July fireworks right in front of where we were sitting on the Georgetown waterfront in Washington.Whatever the reason, the Netflix co-C.E.O. had seafaring adventures on his mind.When I asked Mr. Sarandos how it felt when Netflix lost $54 billion in the blink of an eye on a single bad stock-market day in April, he talked about reading Joseph Conrad’s novella “Typhoon,” once as a younger man and again recently.The first time, he considered the captain who steered straight into the eye of a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean “a terrible leader” who “made a mistake and got people into a very bad situation.” But reading it a couple of decades later, Mr. Sarandos saw the complexity of leadership it takes to get through the storm, as the captain summons all his willpower to dominate a superior force.In this metaphor, the streamer is the steamer, which, Conrad writes, is lurching and pitching and going sideways in the gale “as if taking a header into the void.” And Mr. Sarandos is the skipper who has to swiftly steer the company out of danger, after the stunning news that Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of this year — without spending too much time rehashing how they got there.“We make decisions based on the best information we have at the time,” the 57-year-old said. “They are not always going to be right, but how you help navigate the outcomes, and the urgency you bring to it, is what gets folks through the storm. And the storms will come.”He recalled the Netflix squall of 2011, when Reed Hastings — the founder who now shares the C.E.O. job with Mr. Sarandos — created a separate company, Qwikster, to handle the DVD business. The move helped accelerate an already falling stock price, culminating in a 75 percent drop.“It was horrifying, disappointing and embarrassing,” recalled Mr. Sarandos, who was then the chief content officer. But he feels that they spent too long “sunshining,” to use the Netflix argot for openly examining failures. “How much time do you spend licking your wounds?” he said, adding: “Let’s have that burned into our memory, but we’ve got to move on and move fast.”He conceded that during the pandemic, when Netflix was Icarus, “there were probably a lot of underlying things in the business” that they could have gone “much deeper” on and been “more curious about if we weren’t doing so well.” (The company added 10 million subscribers in the first three months of the pandemic alone.) He added, “We could have been much more questioning of the success and saying, ‘Are you sure?’”It is certainly a wild plot twist worthy of Hollywood: The swaggering company that revolutionized the way Hollywood does business has stalled, with its stock down over 70 percent over six months.The Netflix Lobby MetricOver a three-hour dinner, Mr. Sarandos was charming and upbeat, dressed down in Levi’s and sneakers. You would never know he had been through a Job-level run of bad fortune in the last few months. First, his father, with whom he was very close, died. Soon after, his mother-in-law, Jacqueline Avant, with whom he was also very close, was shot to death when she encountered a burglar in the middle of the night at her Beverly Hills home. Ms. Avant, renowned in Hollywood for her elegance, art collecting, philanthropy and community organizing in Watts, Calif., was the wife of Clarence Avant, a music mogul known as the “Black Godfather.”Then, on top of Mr. Sarandos’s personal woes, Netflix skidded from rapid growth to grind-it-out. (Its stock peaked above $700 a share in November 2021 and has now fallen below $200.)The rise of Mr. Sarandos, a community college night-school dropout, from a video store clerk in Arizona to the pinnacle of Hollywood, is legendary.“He’s had more singular influence on movies and television shows than anyone ever had,” Barry Diller told me. “He has denuded the power of the old movie companies that had held for almost 100 years. They are now irrelevant to setting the play and rules of the day. If there is still a Hollywood, he is it.”Only a few years ago, the Netflix lobby was the coolest place on earth. Now it’s suddenly gloomy. In her “Saturday Night Live” monologue last weekend, Natasha Lyonne, the star of Netflix’s “Russian Doll,” sarcastically cracked that the “two things you definitely want to be associated with right now are Russia and Netflix.”After winning the pandemic, Netflix now finds itself in its own version of its survival drama “Squid Game.” The company hit a ceiling, for now, of some 220 million subscribers, after thinking it could get to a billion with its global empire, and that has thrown a wrench into the future of Netflix and streaming in general. Wall Street suddenly turned a cold shoulder on its former darling, telling Netflix, Guess what, guys, you’ve got to make money, not just grow subscriptions.The company recently announced 150 layoffs, with more sure to come; shows in development, even by big names and a certain Montecito royal, are being dropped. Mr. Sarandos talked about the advertising option, something the company had resisted, so if people want a lower price subscription with ads, they could have it. “For us, it was all about simplicity of one product, one price point.” But, he said, “I think it can now withstand some complexity.”The Netflix hit “Squid Game.”Netflix, via Associated PressAnd how did Hollywood react to this bad news? With a blast of glee. Mr. Sarandos and Mr. Hastings, unassuming men of enormous chutzpah and vision, are being dunked in a vat of schadenfreude, subjected to the sort of vicious backbiting that characterized “House of Cards,” the David Fincher show that helped propel the network to success. As one Hollywood savant said with a shrug, “Nice doesn’t play in this town.”Old-school Hollywood types privately celebrated the news that the new streaming services they had scrambled to create (like HBOMax, Disney+ and NBC’s Peacock) were now disrupting the disrupter. Netflix is a victim of its own success; Ted and Reed pointed the way, but now they have to share their dog bowl. And during inflationary times, people are going to cut back on the number of streaming services they have.Until just recently, Netflix seemed too big to fail, even too big to hate — although some did, anyway. Backed by an ebullient Wall Street, the company was able to outmoney everyone, spending exorbitant sums, poaching talent and executives and muscling into Oscar campaigns with its “Monopoly money,” as one disgusted competitor called it, or “drunken sailor spending,” as another said.“We were trying to build a library to make up for not having 90 years of storytelling,” Mr. Sarandos said.Once talent gorged on Netflix money, like geese destined for foie gras, some became cranky.“Everything was completely amazing up until it wasn’t,” said Janice Min, the C.E.O. of Ankler Media, whose buzzy newsletter circulates through Hollywood C suites. “It’s hard to destroy the ecosystem and try to become king at the same time.”Netflix was an occupying army. “It was Vichy Netflix in Hollywood for the past decade,” Ms. Min said, “where the whole town was forced to adopt their customs and language. Now the traditionalists believe that the interlopers have had a comeuppance.“The schadenfreude set are licking their chops that this is William Holden facedown in the swimming pool. But this is a company that forced Hollywood to move forward 20 years faster than it would have. The burning question in town is, do the executives at the top stay the same now that they’ve hit a massive speed bump?”I asked Mr. Sarandos a version of that question. Could he survive a Keeper Test? (That’s part of the “radical candor,” as it’s called, in Netflix culture, a constant re-evaluation of whether an employee is a star.)“I hope so,” Mr. Sarandos said. “I mean, I think so. We hold each other and the board holds us both to a pretty high bar,” he said, referring to Mr. Hastings. “And I don’t think there’s a place where he’d say, ‘Hey, where’s your accountability for this?’ We’re pretty on top of both the successes and the failures. And if we were not, I think that we would fail the Keeper Test, yeah.”When I asked Mr. Hastings if Mr. Sarandos would pass, he was brisk: “Ted has passed the Keeper Tests for the last 22 years.” The big picture, he said, is that Netflix “is continuing to have some of the most popular shows in America and around the world. We can always pick it up and, you know, we want to do that.”Despite his low-key manner and folksy expressions like “holy moly,” Mr. Hastings is perfectly capable of icing anyone, if he decides it’s in the best interest of the company. He does not think of employees as family, but as a sports team that has to win trophies. Mr. Hastings fired one of his best friends and original employees, Patty McCord, the human resources chief. They drove to work together and she helped him create the controversial culture.I’m also curious about the future of Mr. Sarandos’s top executives, Scott Stuber, the head of the film division, and Bela Bajaria, who oversees original content. So I press, referring to all of the top brass generally: “So, you don’t think any heads are going to roll?”“Um, the way we are organized, no one gets to make that assumption,” Mr. Hastings said. “Everyone has to continue to raise their game throughout the company.”He continued: “I would say we are always reaching for the highest performance, but our content is not why the current slowdown is happening.”‘Everything’s Not Going to Be for Everybody’Mr. Sarandos loves comedy, something that was his North Star when he found himself smack in the middle of the culture wars. There was a backlash last year to Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, “The Closer,” over his jokes about transgender people, and some Netflix employees walked out of the Los Angeles headquarters in protest.But Mr. Sarandos said that, while he was taken by surprise at the kerfuffle, he did not agonize over supporting Mr. Chappelle. He said that the only way comedians can figure out where the line is, is by “crossing the line every once in a while. I think it’s very important to the American culture generally to have free expression.”He continued: “We’re programming for a lot of diverse people who have different opinions and different tastes and different styles, and yet we’re not making everything for everybody. We want something for everybody but everything’s not going to be for everybody.”Netlix employees and activists protest the company’s handling of the Dave Chappelle controversy outside the company’s headquarters.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesHe said he believes this deeply, so his decision about Mr. Chappelle “wasn’t hard in that way. And rarely do you get the opportunity to put your principles to the test,” he said. “It was an opportunity to take somebody, like in Dave’s case, who is, by all measure, the comedian of our generation, the most popular comedian on Netflix for sure. Nobody would say that what he does isn’t thoughtful or smart. You just don’t agree with him. ”Mr. Chappelle was attacked onstage in May at the Hollywood Bowl during the “Netflix Is a Joke Festival,” by a man who said he was “triggered” by the comedian’s jokes about the L.G.B.T.Q. community and homelessness. Days later, Netflix released a new corporate culture memo, which had been workshopped among company employees for six months, and attracted 10,000 comments. The memo underscored Mr. Sarandos’s response: “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”Conservatives celebrated. “Netflix Puts Its Woke Employees On Notice With Blunt Memo,” read a Daily Caller headline. When I asked Mr. Sarandos how he felt about turning into a conservative hero, he said, “It used to be a very liberal issue, so it’s an interesting time that we live in.”He added, “I always said if we censor in the U.S., how are we going to defend our content in the Middle East?”After the Ricky Gervais comedy special went up on Netflix Tuesday, a similar brush fire started about his transgender jokes, with Variety’s Daniel D’Addario writing a story headlined “Ricky Gervais Anti-Trans Special Proves Netflix Is On No One’s Side But Its Own.” I asked Mr. Sarandos about it. He said his remarks about Mr. Chappelle applied to Mr. Gervais.‘Are You the Netflix Guy?’In a town where executives and especially agents are often illiterate about the history of TV and movies, Mr. Sarandos is an unabashed fan. He told me that if he had a free day to do anything, he would watch a movie in the nine-seat screening room in his house, converted from a guest bedroom. The Netflix honcho can wax eloquent on the great shows he’s watching on HBO Max, Showtime, Disney+ and Peacock just as easily as the ones he loves on Netflix.Asked who would be at his dream dinner party, past or present, he said Ernie Kovacs, Carole Lombard, Orson Welles, Mel Brooks and Norman Lear. “I used to see the words ‘Created by Norman Lear’ so often, I didn’t think it was a real person,” he said. “I thought it was like ‘In God We Trust.’” One of the “blessings” of his life, he said, is that he has met many of his idols.“That thing about ‘Don’t meet your heroes,’ I think that’s silly,” he said. “The first time I got to go to the Oscars, we were sitting directly behind Francis Ford Coppola, and I was, like, giddy. So I tapped Nicole and whispered to her, and she goes ‘You’re a terrible whisperer, you know that?’ So the first break comes and he turns around and says, ‘Are you the Netflix guy?’ That was pretty wild.”Mr. SarandosDevin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesHe fell for the 54-year-old Nicole, a film producer who started in the music industry and Democratic politics, the night he met her at an event for Barack Obama in Los Angeles in 2008. She was the Southern California finance co-chair for the Obama campaign and became President Barack Obama’s ambassador to the Bahamas. Mr. Sarandos said he knew she was the one after she showed her chops on old movies such as “Now, Voyager” and “Cabin in the Sky,” with Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong, and documentaries like “Eyes on the Prize,” about the American civil rights movement.His wife said his belly laugh, his “authentic” kindness, his desire to live life to the fullest and the fact that he’s a “really good egg” who jumps out of his car to help a motorist in trouble without thinking twice, are the reasons she fell in love with him. It certainly wasn’t his old Banana Republic jacket. (She upgraded him to a navy Brunello Cucinelli suit one Christmas.) Or his 1996 Acura MDX with the tear in the seat. (As a birthday gift to Nicole, he said he “put it out of its misery” and traded it for a 2016 black Porsche Cayennne S.U.V.)“I was never drawn to this for the trappings,” he said.Of the tragedy they went through with her mother, while Mr. Sarandos was still grieving his father, Ms. Avant said, “It would have torn many families apart. But Teddy doesn’t deflect. He sees a tragedy or crisis, takes it in and says ‘We are going to get through this.’ That’s what I love about him. He’s the calm in the storm.”Mr. Sarandos grew up in a lower-middle-class home in Phoenix in a family of five with young, “hippie Catholic” parents. His father was an electrician. “They started having kids at 17,” he told me. “Neither finished high school. My dad had this philosophy that if there’s leftover food, you could have more kids, I guess. My memories of growing up in that house are that it was chaotic all the time. Nothing was ever on a schedule. We didn’t have a bedtime. We didn’t have a dinner time.”He said TV gave him structure, and he dreamed of going up onto the screen, “The Purple Rose of Cairo” style, to be part of the Cunningham family on “Happy Days.”Ted Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThe utilities and phone would often be cut off, he said, but his mother always made sure they had cable TV and she got a V.C.R. and a little dish on the roof to get HBO.“It was this crazy luxury for a family who could barely afford to keep the lights on,” he told me. Somehow, he thinks, his late mother had a vision for his future.The family didn’t go to movies unless it was a drive-in because his father couldn’t go two hours without a smoke. Their cultural high point was going to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons every year at the Arizona State Fair.When things got crazy at home, he went to his grandmother’s and it was “paradise.” “It was very structured, very calm,” he said. “She would watch a lot of TV, and she had all the magazines about movies. She always called movie stars by their first names like she knew them, like Mac and Glen for Mac Davis and Glen Campbell. They were friends, and I don’t know who stole whose wife but it was a very big deal for her.”And then, he said, “the universe” offered up the second video store in the state of Arizona around the corner. “When I walked into that store, it was a life changer,” he said. He worked his way up from clerk to managing eight video stores to one of the top jobs for West Coast Video, which at its peak had nearly 500 stores.‘It’s Not Like We Invented the Bidding War, You Know’Netflix resentment has been simmering for a while. Speaking in 2019 at CinemaCon, Helen Mirren told the crowd, “I love Netflix,” but then she flung a vulgarity at the streaming service, adding “There’s nothing like sitting in the cinema.”“She sent an immediate apology text,” Mr. Sarandos told me, smiling. “I think she was caught up in the moment. I mean, you’re talking to a roomful of small theater owners who were feeling they were under assault.”He said he understands “why people would be snickering a bit” now and notes: “Remember, I was in a business that was totally disrupted, too. I was in the video rental business.”Mr. Sarandos became so conversant with the 900 videos in the video stores he ran that he was the pre-algorithm, able to recommend films to people based on what they had previously watched.“I’ve always and I continue to be a very optimistic watcher,” he said. “I hardly ever turn off anything I’m watching because I think the good parts are coming.”As Ms. Min said, “Ted may be the only executive who has come within a million miles of an actual consumer of entertainment during his career.”Netflix’s co-CEOs, Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated PressMr. Sarandos is philosophical about the town vibrating with joy at his troubles. “Nobody wants to have their foundations challenged or their conventions challenged and we definitely did all that.” He points out that it is, after all, a very competitive business. “It’s not like we invented the bidding war, you know.”Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose movies “Kindergarten Teacher” and “The Lost Daughter” were acquired by Netflix, evokes the Medicis in the way Netflix supports art that might get lost, art that is dark and painful to watch. “Not once was I pushed to make a change I didn’t want to make,” she said.Mr. Sarandos said that when he met Reed Hastings in 1999, he was driven by the desire to help great storytellers reach people around the world.“There were some movies that never came to Phoenix, and it always made me crazy,” he said. “I thought that video rental never really solved the promise because it just became a repeat of the same distribution problem, very hit driven.”Mr. Sarandos often brings up the idea of democratization. “Netflix did diversity and inclusion better than anyone in Hollywood ever had or will,” Ms. Min said. “One of their first shows was ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ a female prison drama, with a transgender character, that no one would touch.”When I talk to other executives and talent around town, they have glowing things to say about Mr. Sarandos behind his back.“It sounds so boring but this guy is incredibly friendly, kind, gregarious and warm,” said Jason Bateman, the star of Netflix’s “Ozark.” “If Marty Byrde were to describe him, he might say, he has all the power of a cartel boss and none of the frown.”Many rivals do question Netflix’s business model, which they think was overvalued by Wall Street and outran financial logic for a long time. Some say royalties have been replaced by front-loaded, bloated contracts, making flops all the more costly and obscuring creators’ ability to see just how successful their works are. Those rivals wonder if the quality of Netflix’s content needs upgrading — given that it made 70 movies in 2021 — so that, as one rival executive put it, they have filet at the buffet as well as vegetables and mashed potatoes.“Tiffany’s became a Sears overnight,” sniffed one Hollywood player who has dealt with the company.And they wonder about the wisdom of writing gazillion-dollar checks to sign up celebrities with no filmmaking experience, like the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who were given producing deals. (Barack Obama is also signed up to narrate a National Geographic-style nature documentary.)“You have to bet early on storytellers,” Mr. Sarandos said. My experience with Barack and Michelle is they are phenomenal storytellers.”But Netflix is not going forward with Meghan Markle’s cartoon show about a 12-year-old girl, “Pearl.”How does it feel to drop a semi-royal?“We’re all optimistic when we go into these projects,” Mr. Sarandos said, “and sometimes they do or don’t materialize.”What’s So Bad About Being CBS?Mr. Sarandos’s 2020 decision to oust Cindy Holland, his vice president of original content who had developed expensive hits like “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Stranger Things,” “The Crown” and “The Queen’s Gambit” and signed off on big checks — $100 million to Shonda Rhimes (recruited by Mr. Sarandos) and $300 million to Ryan Murphy — continues to rankle in some quarters. Ms. Holland was seen as an exemplar of more curated chic and less mass appeal, and as Kim Masters wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, she clashed with Mr. Sarandos about the demand for ever more volume, the lavish Oscar campaigns and giving Mr. Chappelle more specials.Mr. Sarandos said that he and Ms. Holland got the business to where it was, but he wanted to give Ms. Bajaria, formerly Netflix’s head of unscripted and international content, the top slot because she had international experience, which he thought could help the company to grow. She also had a gift for picking hits like “You.”Some rivals contend that Netflix started out boldly but then became Walmart or CBS, with too much “Emily in Paris” and not enough “Stranger Things.”The Netflix hit “Emily in Paris.”Netflix, via Associated Press“CBS is one of the most successful TV networks in history,” Mr. Sarandos responded imperturbably. “So, yeah.” He also thinks “Emily in Paris” is high-quality television, adding “Peyton Manning goes on ‘S.N.L.’ and is talking about ‘Emily in Paris.’”“We’re trying to satisfy multiple tastes,” he said. “This year, we had two best picture nominees, ‘Power of the Dog’ and ‘Don’t Look Up,’ and they couldn’t be any more different.”And he brags about “Squid Game,” which he calls “the biggest entertainment story in a century.” He said his team in Korea found the story, which had been pitched as a movie for 10 years, and asked the creator to conceptualize it as a series.“This is where the algorithm is your friend,” he said. “The algorithm is an advocate for the audience trying to find that thing you never heard of that you’re going to love. And it kept recognizing very quickly that this thing was happening in Korea and ‘Oh, my God, it’s happening in Japan.’ ‘Oh, it’s happening in France.’”He’s sanguine that Netflix hasn’t hit its ceiling. After all, according to Nielsen, streaming accounted for a little more than 30 percent of TV viewership in the United States in April. Netflix had the most viewers of any streamer, but accounted for just 6.6 percent of all TV viewership in the United States.One way that Netflix will keep growing, Mr. Sarandos said, is that the company will work to tighten password control, or figure out a way people can pay to share their password. “About a third of American households are borrowing the password to someone else’s account,” Mr. Hastings said.Mr. Sarandos doesn’t agree with criticism that Netflix needs to stop greenlighting so many projects and embrace a more selective approach, even though, as Scott Galloway, a tech guru and New York University marketing professor, said dryly, “They’re spending the defense budget of Sweden on content.” (Actually, Netflix spends far more. Sweden spent about $7 billion on defense in 2021, and Netflix said it spent $17 billion on content that year.)“I don’t think that we’ve done anything so willy-nilly that we should rethink it,” Mr. Sarandos said, adding: “While many competitors and pundits talk about volume being a negative, I think it is a tremendous positive for consumers who all have a different view of what ‘quality’ is. I think that, while they kick us around about it, they are starting on the same path — HBO with Discovery programming on the same shelf, Disney broadening their brand with Fox content, and even FX’s radical expansion of output to 22 shows.”Does he think that Netflix not diversifying its revenue strategy has exacerbated recent obstacles?“I think it’s the trade-off of simplicity and complexity,” he said. “And to do what we did in the last 10 years, I think we benefited much more from simplicity.”Many artists at Netflix are happy to defend the company in this moment of churn.“Decisions are not made by an algorithm,” said Guillermo del Toro, who is making “Pinocchio” for Netflix. “What’s really important about Ted is that he’s in the room, not just his body. He’s completely engaged with you.”Jerry Seinfeld waves off the schadenfreude. “People are just yapping away at their lunches, like they always do,” the comedian said. “They come after you if you’ve got the ball. Ted’s got the ball.”Shonda Rhimes, flush with “Inventing Anna” and “Bridgerton” success, is rosy about the future: “I live in this space and I wouldn’t bet against Netflix.”“Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings are A-Rod and Barry Bonds,” Mr. Galloway said, adding that while they may have been beaned in the face, “You don’t want to bet against these guys.”Mr. Sarandos, of course, is optimistic. “We’re 90 years behind all of our current competitors in what we do today, and they’re just entering into our space,” he said. “We have to have content that people like better on Netflix than anywhere else. I know it seems like it should be more complicated than that, but it almost isn’t.”Mr. Sarandos.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesConfirm or DenyMaureen Dowd: You were a better video store clerk than Quentin Tarantino.Ted Sarandos: I don’t know how great a video store clerk he was, but I was probably nicer to the customers who forgot to rewind the tapes.If media executives recreated “Squid Game,” Rupert Murdoch would be the guy who tricks everyone, Reed Hastings would be the frontman, and Bob Chapek would get killed in the first round.(Laughing) Plausible. And you could scramble them in any way.Let’s play MFK (Marry, “Fornicate,” Kill): Hulu, HBO and Disney+.I would say “M” all three and I would “F” all three. The jury is out on “K.”Barack is much more fun to party with than Michelle.Deny.You named your son after Tony Bennett long before you met him.That is true. Anthony Bennett Sarandos. Tony is an unbelievable singer, obviously, but also a civil rights activist, a great painter, a super-well-rounded human being. We got to be good friends and one day, Tony goes “Why would you name your kid Tony Bennett?” I go, “Well, first of all, I never thought I’d have to explain it to you.”After the Netflix subscriber news broke, you turned on Merle Haggard’s hit “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink”I’m a huge fan.Executives at media companies make too much money.No comment. More

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      The 50 Best Movies on HBO Max Right Now

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      In addition to new Warner and HBO films, the streamer has a treasure trove of Golden Age classics, indie flicks and foreign films. Start with these.When HBO Max debuted in May 2020, subscribers rightfully expected (and got) the formidable catalog of prestige television associated with the HBO brand. But, if anything, its movie library draws from a much deeper well. WarnerMedia, which owns HBO, is a huge conglomerate, and its premiere streaming service comprises decades of titles from Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies and Studio Ghibli, as well as new work produced directly for HBO Max.That means a lot of large-scale fantasy series like Harry Potter and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and selections from the DC extended universe. HBO Max is also an education in Golden Age Hollywood classics and in independent and foreign auteurs like Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray and John Cassavetes. The list below is an effort to recommend a diverse range of movies — old and new, foreign and domestic, all-ages and adults-only — that cross genres and cultures while appealing to casual and serious movie-watchers alike. (Note: Streaming services sometimes remove titles of change starting dates without notice.)Here are our lists of the best movies and TV shows on Netflix, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video and the best of everything on Hulu and Disney+.Keir Dullea in a scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”Warner Bros. Pictures‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)From its “dawn of man” sequence to its cosmic exploration of the future, this science-fiction classic from Stanley Kubrick traces mankind’s evolutionary and technological leaps, as well the conflicts that inspire and are inspired by them. Still astonishing in its mammoth ambition and philosophical scope, “2001: A Space Odyssey” turns a mission to Jupiter, guided by the sinister supercomputer HAL 9000, into a journey for the mind and the eye. The New York Times critic Renata Adler complained about its “uncompromising slowness” at the time, but the film has aged well to say the least. (Also by Kubrick: “A Clockwork Orange,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “The Shining.”)Watch it on HBO MaxEl Hedi ben Salem and Brigitte Mira in “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.”Peter Gauhe‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’ (1974)Doing his own audacious twist on Douglas Sirk’s “All That Heaven Allows,” a heartbreaking romance about a wealthy widow’s affair with a humble gardener, Rainer Werner Fassbinder offers a much odder couple, attempting to bridge the gulfs of age and race. The mismatched pair here are a Moroccan laborer (El Hedi ben Salem) in his 40s and a German house cleaner over two decades his senior (Brigitte Mira), and Fassbinder uses their relationship to expose the societal forces that both unite and divide them. Our critic Vincent Canby praised “the careful detail” with which Fassbinder dramatizes the couple’s ostracism. (Also by Fassbinder: “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” “Fox and his Friends,” “The Marriage of Maria Braun”)Watch it on HBO Max‘An Angel at My Table’ (1991)Before her international breakthrough, “The Piano,” the director Jane Campion carved this television mini-series into an impassioned 158-minute portrait of the New Zealand author Janet Frame, based on her three autobiographical novels. With different actors playing Frame at three stages of her life — most notably Kerry Fox as the adult Janet — the film celebrates her resilience under the terrible hardships of poverty and a long stint in a mental institution. Her writing was her escape and her salvation. Vincent Canby admired how film “records the world as Janet sees it, sometimes beautiful and as often frightening.” (Also by Campion: “Sweetie.”)Watch it on HBO MaxA scene from the Gillo Pontecorvo film “The Battle of Algiers.”Rialto Pictures‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1967)Gillo Pontecorvo’s scrupulous depiction of insurgent and anti-terrorist tactics in the Algerian War of Independence proved so persuasive in its newsreel style that it required a disclaimer to let audiences know it was a work of fiction. Though hugely controversial in Europe for its treatment of the Algerian resistance and French torture tactics, “The Battle of Algiers” is such a cleareyed and accomplished vision of modern warfare that it has been studied by the Pentagon. Bosley Crowther called it “an uncommonly dynamic picture.”Watch it on HBO MaxDeborah Kerr in a scene from the Powell/Pressburger film “Black Narcissus.”Universal Pictures‘Black Narcissus’ (1947)Shot with a Technicolor vividness that pops with sensuality, this simmering melodrama from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a rapturous exploration of forbidden pleasure. Deborah Kerr stars as the well-meaning mother superior of a convent in the Himalayas, where the nuns try to expand a former pleasure palace into a school and hospital. But as she struggles to hold the convent together, she and the other nuns can’t help but be swept up by the wildness of the place. The critic Thomas M. Pryor called it “a work of rare pictorial beauty.” (Also by Powell and Pressburger: “49th Parallel,” “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” “The Red Shoes.”)Watch it on HBO MaxDan Hedaya, left, and E. Emmet Walsh in Coen Brothers’ debut, “Blood Simple.”USA Films‘Blood Simple’ (1985)With their uncommonly assured neo-noir debut, Joel and Ethan Coen set the tone for a brilliant career that has frequently touched on amateur criminality and its tragicomic consequences. Nodding to James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” the film is about a bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a shady contract killer (M. Emmet Walsh) after he learns of an affair between his wife (Frances McDormand) and his bartender (John Getz). The result is a riveting, slow-motion disaster. The critic Janet Maslin praised the film for its “black humor, abundant originality and brilliant visual style.” (Also by the Coens: “No Country for Old Men”)Watch it on HBO Max‘Brief Encounter’ (1946)The director David Lean may be better known for epics like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago,” but he was equally skilled in rendering the intimate emotions at play in modest productions like “Brief Encounter,” which saves most of the waterworks for the dingy refreshment room off a railway. Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard star as married people who fall in love inadvertently while nursing their platonic friendship every Thursday at a Milford train station. The sad inevitability of their relationship makes it no less romantic. Bosley Crowther called it “extremely poignant.” (Also by Lean: “Blithe Spirit,” “Great Expectations,” “Summertime.”)Watch it on HBO MaxFrom left, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter and William Hurt in a scene from “Broadcast News.”20th Century Fox/Alamy‘Broadcast News’ (1987)Through his incisive, hilarious comedy-drama about TV journalism, the writer-director James L. Brooks exposes sins of ethics and taste that seem quaint by today’s diminished standards, but the richness of his characters stands the test of time. The friendship between a high-strung producer (Holly Hunter) and a star reporter (Albert Brooks) frays when she takes a romantic interest in a handsome anchorman (William Hurt) who represents everything about news they despise. The critic Vincent Canby admired how Brooks “has so balanced the movie that no one performance can run off with it.”Watch it on HBO MaxStacey Dash and Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless.”Paramount Pictures‘Clueless’ (1995)Amy Heckerling’s bright, ingenious twist on Jane Austen’s “Emma” imagines the 19th century matchmaker as a Beverly Hills rich girl whose Cupid-like machinations lead to her own romantic makeover. Pulling off mid-90s fashion and Heckerling’s mock-teen slang with equal aplomb, Alicia Silverstone stars as a popular girl who tries to hook up a new kid (Brittany Murphy) with a good-looking “Baldwin” in her social group. Critic Janet Maslin called it “a candy-colored, brightly satirical showcase” for Silverstone’s “decidedly visual talents.”Watch it on HBO MaxTom Sizemore, left, and Denzel Washington in a scene from “Devil in a Blue Dress.”D. Stevens/TriStar Pictures‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ (1995)Based on the first of Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins mysteries, this luxuriant and twisty neo-noir evokes “Chinatown” in exploring the racial fault-lines of post-World War II Los Angeles. Denzel Washington flashes effortless movie-star charisma as Rawlins, a nascent gumshoe hired to find a missing white woman known for frequenting juke joints. As his trigger-happy friend, Don Cheadle gives an electric, scene-stealing supporting performance that set the course of his career. Janet Maslin called it “an unusually vibrant film noir.”Watch it on HBO MaxHidetoshi Nishijima, left, and Toko Miura in a scene from “Drive My Car.”Bitters End‘Drive My Car’ (2021)A three-hour Japanese drama from a small independent distributor wasn’t the most likely candidate for a best picture nomination. But this multilayered treatment of grief, relationships and creativity from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, based on a story by Haruki Murakami, is a special piece of work. Hidetoshi Nishijima stars as a sought-after theater director who agrees to stage a version of “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima and further agrees to the company’s directive that he allow a driver (Toko Miura) to escort him to the venue and back. A.O. Scott called the film “a story about grief, love and work as well as the soul-sustaining, life-shaping power of art.”Watch it on HBO MaxTimothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in “Dune.”Chia Bella James/Warner Bros.‘Dune’ (2021)With its combination of grade-scale world building, thrilling space adventure and hallucinogenic imagery, Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel, “Dune,” has a unique allure that’s difficult to translate to the screen. Yet Denis Villeneuve’s attempt miraculously cracks the code, preserving the language and politics of the novel while following Paul (Timothée Chalamet), a gifted young man thrust into a galactic battle over the desert planet Arrakis and a precious resource called “the spice.” Our critic Manohla Dargis called it “a starry, sumptuous take on the novel’s first half.”Watch it on HBO MaxJames Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “Enough Said,” released a few months after Gandolfini’s death.Fox Searchlight Pictures‘Enough Said’ (2013)Released widely just a few months after James Gandolfini’s death, this funny, mature romantic comedy from Nicole Holofcener proved that the charisma Gandolfini brought to the lead role in “The Sopranos” didn’t always have to be dark. As a divorced empty nester who starts dating a masseuse (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in the same situation, Gandolfini carries himself with gentle good humor as Holofcener throws their relationship for a screwball loop. A.O. Scott called it “line for line, scene for scene,” one of the “best-written American film comedies in recent memory.”Watch it on HBO MaxJack Nance in David Lynch’s cult classic “Eraserhead.”AFI‘Eraserhead’ (1977)Before upending film and television with genre-expanding work like “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch burst onto the scene with this Midnight Movie classic, an experimental feature that turns domestic anxiety into surrealist science fiction. In Lynch’s black-and-white, creepily industrialized setting, a man with an outsized shock of curly hair (Jack Nance) tries to come to terms with his changing family, which now includes a mutant newborn. The critic Tom Buckley called it “interminable,” but Lynch’s reputation (and this film’s) has grown immensely in the years since it was released. (Also by Lynch: “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.”)Watch it on HBO MaxJoel McCrea in “Foreign Correspondent.”United Artists‘Foreign Correspondent’ (1940)Though rarely cited among established Alfred Hitchcock classics like “North by Northwest,” “Vertigo” and “Psycho,” “Foreign Correspondent” is every bit as masterly, a subtle and generously entertaining piece of wartime intrigue made for and about fraught times. Joel McCrea plays a bored city desk reporter in New York who gets all the action he can handle as a foreign correspondent in Europe, but the assignment soon embeds him in a treacherous web of shifty diplomats and Nazi spies. The Times critic Bosley Crowther raved that the film “should be the particular favorite of a great many wonder-eyed folk.” (Also by Hitchcock: “The 39 Steps,” “The Lady Vanishes,” North by Northwest”)Watch it on HBO MaxWarner Bros.‘Goodfellas’ (1990)Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s “Wiseguy,” a biography about the gangster turned informant Henry Hill, this electrifying epic from Martin Scorsese evokes the seductions of organized lawlessness before the consequences come down like a hammer. In contrast to “The Godfather,” which focused on the head of a New York family, “Goodfellas” settles on low- to midlevel gangsters, tracking the rise and fall of Hill (Ray Liotta) and his cohorts, played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, as they’re undone by their own criminal excesses. Vincent Canby called the film “breathless and brilliant.” (Also by Scorsese: “The Aviator,” “The Departed,” “Mean Streets.”)Watch it on HBO MaxToni Servillo in a scene from Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty.”Gianni Fiorito/Janus Films‘The Great Beauty’ (2013)Perhaps the brashest of the new wave of Italian filmmakers, Paolo Sorrentino all but declares himself Federico Fellini’s heir apparent with this spectacularly decadent experience, which evokes Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.” In fact, Toni Servillo could be an older version of Marcello Mastroianni in that film, a 65-year-old journalist whose lavish birthday party reminds him of the emptiness of a lifetime schmoozing among the elites. As with Fellini’s film, the formlessness of the evening allows for maximum spontaneity. Our critic Manohla Dargis called it “deliciously alive.”Watch it on HBO MaxWarner Home Video‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’ (1990)When Joe Dante’s family-friendly horror-comedy “Gremlins” was a huge hit in 1984, the studio gave Dante creative carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the sequel. He basically treated the offer like an oversized gremlin. Channeling the manic pop energy of Frank Tashlin and Tex Avery, “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” uses the opening of a high-tech skyscraper to unleash chaos, with dozens of nasty creatures gumming up the works. Janet Maslin wanted to “add this to the very short list of sequels that neatly surpass their predecessors.” (Also by Dante: “Gremlins,” “Looney Tunes: Back in Action.”)Watch it on HBO Max‘Harlan County USA’ (1977)This landmark labor documentary by Barbara Kopple brought cameras into coal country in 1973, covering the herculean efforts of 180 miners in southeast Kentucky to sustain a strike against the Duke Power Company. As the strike wears on, Kopple captures the rising tensions and violence between the two parties, with the company bringing in replacement workers and armed strikebreakers to intimidate their employees. More than once, even Kopple’s safety is put in serious jeopardy. The critic Richard Eder called it “a brilliantly detailed report from one side of a battle.”Watch it on HBO MaxDaniel Radcliffe in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”Murray Close/Warner Bros. Pictures‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004)After the first two Harry Potter movies dutifully established the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling onscreen, the director Alfonso Cuarón took the franchise to a more mature and fantastical level, better suiting a hero who is getting older and facing greater obstacles. This time, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his Hogwarts friends, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), square off against one of the evil Voldemort’s aides, a vicious prison escapee named Sirius Black (Gary Oldman). A.O. Scott called it the first Harry Potter adaptation “that actually looks and feels like a movie, rather than a staged reading with special effects.” (Also: The entire Harry Potter collection.)Watch it on HBO MaxWilliam Gates, left, as seen in the documentary “Hoop Dreams.”Fine Line Features‘Hoop Dreams’ (1994)For four years, the director Steve James and his crew followed two gifted Chicago high school basketball players as they pursued a long-shot ambition to make it to the N.B.A. and lift their families out of poverty. “Hoop Dreams” is about the impossible burden they’ve chosen to carry, one in which an errant free throw or a tweaked knee can have serious real-life consequences. The critic Caryn James called it a “fascinating, suspenseful film [that] turns the endless revision of the American dream into high drama.”Watch it on HBO MaxTakashi Shimura in a scene from “Ikiru.”Janus Films‘Ikiru’ (1952)In the lead-up to his epic “Seven Samurai,” the director Akira Kurosawa tried his hand at this intimate, heartbreaking work about a man whose imminent death finally teaches him about how best to live. Takashi Shimura stars as a faceless bureaucrat who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis near the end of his 30-year career and struggles to figure out what to do with the time he has left. Bosley Crowther called it “a varied and detailed illustration of middle-class life in contemporary Japan.” (Also by Kurosawa: “The Hidden Fortress,” “Rashomon,” “Seven Samurai,” “Throne of Blood,” “Yojimbo.”)Watch it on HBO MaxSidney Poitier in a scene from “In the Heat of the Night.”Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images‘In the Heat of the Night’ (1967)Released in the midst of the civil rights movement, this best picture winner from Norman Jewison muscled its way into the conversation with a police drama about racial hostilities and prejudices in the Deep South. In a career-defining role, Sidney Poitier stars as a Philadelphia police detective who is mistakenly collared for murder in small-town Mississippi, then asked by the local police chief (Rod Steiger) to help solve the case. Bosley Crowther found “the juxtaposition of resentments between whites and blacks” in the film to be “vividly and forcefully illustrated.”Watch it on HBO MaxMaggie Cheung and Tony Leung in a scene from “In the Mood for Love.”The Criterion Collection‘In the Mood for Love’ (2001)Few films are as ravishingly beautiful as Wong Kar-wai’s intoxicating film about Hong Kong in the early to mid-60s, starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, two screen icons at the peak of their powers. Leung and Cheung play lonely-hearts who form a special kinship because of their spouses’ neglect, but they’re reluctant to follow through on the intense romantic longing they feel for each other. Wong’s story of unrequited love in a changing city earned him the best reviews of his career, including one from the critic Elvis Mitchell, who called the film “a sweet kiss blown to a time long since over.” (Also by Wong: “Happy Together.”)Watch it on HBO MaxKurt Cobain, as seen in the documentary “Montage of Heck.”The End of Music LLC‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck’ (2015)When Kurt Cobain died, he left behind a treasure trove of footage from his childhood, along with expansive musical archives and live performances with Nirvana. In Brett Morgen, the montage maestro who co-directed “The Kids Stays in the Picture” and directed the day-in-the-life 30 For 30 documentary “June 17th, 1994,” Courtney Love found the perfect filmmaker to approach with the material. “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” is a sad, raucous, play-it-loud music documentary that ties the source of Cobain’s creative genius to the lifelong vulnerabilities that led to his early death. Our critic Mike Hale called it “both an artful mosaic and a hammering barrage.”Watch it on HBO Max‘La Notte’ (1962)The year after his international breakthrough, “L’Avventura,” beguiled and mystified audiences, Michelangelo Antonioni brought the same theme of alienation to the city with “La Notte,” which turns Milan into a hauntingly beautiful and empty place. Set within a 24-hour time frame, the film stars Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau as an unhappily married couple who go out for a rare night on the town and have their relationship tested. Bosley Crowther wrote that “the subtle attunement of one’s mood” will largely determine how much viewers will connect with the film. (Also by Antonioni: “L’Avventura,” “Red Desert.”)Watch it on HBO MaxKenny G, as seen in the documentary “Listening to Kenny G.”HBO‘Listening to Kenny G’ (2021)Call it elevator music. Call it sonic wallpaper. Call it whatever you like, but the fact is that Kenny G is the most popular jazz musician of his time, a solo saxophonist who has sold over 75 million records and dominated the adult contemporary scene. “Listening to Kenny G” takes a step back and examines this unique cultural phenomenon from every perspective, including that of fans, critics and the indefatigable man himself, who keeps finding new ways to stay in the conversation. The critic Glenn Kenny found that “the link between what makes Kenny G a star and what makes him annoying is spot on.”Watch it on HBO MaxElijah Wood in “The Fellowship of the Ring.”New Line Cinema‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ (2001)The more films and TV shows attempt to mimic the world-building majesty of Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic, the better his three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy looks. “The Fellowship of the Ring” has the unenviable task of setting the table for adventures to come, but it establishes the scope and characters of Middle-Earth with thrilling verve, starting with Frodo (Elijah Wood), a humble hobbit asked to destroy a ring of corrosive power. Elvis Mitchell praised Jackson’s “heroic job in tackling perhaps the most intimidating nerd/academic fantasy classic ever.” (Also in the trilogy: “The Two Towers,” “The Return of the King.”)Watch it on HBO MaxOmar Epps and Sanaa Lathan in “Love and Basketball.”Sidney Baldwin/New Line Cinema‘Love & Basketball’ (2000)Gina Prince-Bythewood’s sexy, heartfelt romantic drama stood out among the abundant rom-coms of its time for the sincerity and complexity of its two main characters, whose hoop dreams lead them in and out of each other’s lives. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan star as childhood sweethearts who bond over a passion for basketball (and trash-talking) but follow rocky paths through the professional game — and through a relationship that suffers from the same patches of instability. Elvis Mitchell appreciated its “enchanting, lived-in homeyness.”Watch it on HBO MaxDenzel Washington in the title role of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.”Warner Bros.‘Malcolm X’ (1992)Three years after “Do the Right Thing,” the director Spike Lee was expected to ignite controversy again with his adaptation of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” but the film turned out to be a studio biopic of the first order, arguing for the humanity and vision of a civil rights figure whose activism was forged by life experience. Denzel Washington gives a towering performance as Malcolm, who survived a misspent youth, became a Muslim and grew into a leader. Vincent Canby called it “an ambitious, tough, seriously considered biographical film.” (Also by Lee: “4 Little Girls,” “He Got Game,” “Inside Man,” “When the Levees Broke”)Watch it on HBO MaxEugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara in “A Mighty Wind.”Suzanne Tenner/Warner Bros.‘A Mighty Wind’ (2003)In their follow-up to “Waiting for Guffman” and “Best in Show,” the director Christopher Guest and his first-rate troupe of improvisatory performers returned with a folk music parody that is notable for its disarming sweetness, despite the many digs at granola culture. The death of a beloved producer brings the acts he discovered together for a reunion concert, including The Folksmen (Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer) and the estranged Mitch & Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara). A.O. Scott wrote that the cast is “capable of being funny in so many different ways.” (Also by Guest: “Best in Show.”)Watch it on HBO MaxBenicio Del Toro, left, and Don Cheadle in “No Sudden Move.”Claudette Barius/Warner Bros. Pictures‘No Sudden Move’ (2021)Over two decades after his superior Elmore Leonard adaptation “Out of Sight,” the director Steven Soderbergh headed back to Detroit for another witty, suspenseful, star-packed thriller, set deeper in the city’s racially fraught past. Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro and Kieran Culkin star as mismatched henchmen hired to hold a businessman’s family hostage while he attempts, as subtly as possible, to steal documents for them at work. A.O. Scott called it “a tight and twisty against-the-clock crime caper.” (Also by Soderbergh: “Beyond the Candelabra,” “Magic Mike,” “Ocean’s Eleven.”)Watch it on HBO MaxBen Whishaw voices the amiable bear in “Paddington 2.”Warner Bros.‘Paddington 2’ (2018)It seemed impossible to turn the “Paddington” of Michael Bond’s storybooks into a good movie. And when that happened, it seemed improbable for the sequel to be an improvement. Yet “Paddington 2” is another adorable comic adventure, given an additional boost by memorable supporting turns, most notably from Brendan Gleeson as an ill-tempered prison cook and Hugh Grant as a vain actor turned diabolical villain. The critic Teo Bugbee wrote that the filmmakers “spin good writing and seamless digital effects into Rococo children’s entertainment.”Watch it on HBO MaxKim Wayans, left, and Adepero Oduye in a scene from Dee Rees’s first feature, “Pariah.”Focus Features‘Pariah’ (2011)For her first feature, the writer-director Dee Rees expanded a short film into a sensitive, big-hearted and surprisingly funny coming-of-age drama about a Brooklyn teenager who is as marginalized as the title suggests. Played by Adepero Oduye, Alike is a Black lesbian who steps tentatively into her queer identity while keeping her sexuality a secret from her parents — even though it’s obvious they have their suspicions. The critic Stephen Holden wrote that Oduye “captures the jagged mood swings of late adolescence with a wonderfully spontaneous fluency.”Watch it on HBO Max‘Persona’ (1967)The opening minutes of Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” shocked international audiences with its experimental imagery, but the remaining minutes are no less audacious in Bergman’s willingness to push his expected dramatic intensity to a new, more abstract realm. Liv Ullmann plays a famed stage actress whose mid-performance breakdown leads first to hospitalization and later to a retreat on the Baltic Sea, where her relationship with a nurse (Bibi Andersson) takes on peculiar dimensions. Bosley Crowther called it a “lovely, moody film which, for all its intense emotionalism, makes some tough intellectual demands.” (Also by Bergman: “Cries and Whispers,” “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries.”)Watch it on HBO MaxGreta Scacchi and Tim Robbins in “The Player.”Lorey Sebastian/Fine Line Features‘The Player’ (1992)After a decade of flops in the ’80s, the director Robert Altman burst back on the scene with a Hollywood satire that doubles as an act of revenge. Through the story of Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a soulless studio executive who murders a disgruntled screenwriter, Altman had the narrative scaffolding he needed to land jab after jab about an industry that had been unfriendly to him for decades. Vincent Canby hailed “the return of the great gregarious filmmaker whose ‘Nashville’ remains one of the classics of the 1970s.” (Also by Altman: “M*A*S*H” and “Popeye.”)Watch it on HBO MaxKumiko Aso in a scene from “Pulse.”Magnolia Pictures‘Pulse’ (2001)A signature achievement of the Japanese horror boom of the early-to-mid ’00s, this unnerving shocker from Kiyoshi Kurosawa taps into the fears of an increasingly tech-driven world by imagining literal ghosts in the machine. After a friend commits suicide, a group of young people in Tokyo start to believe that digitized spirits are emerging as an unstoppable threat in the real world. The critic Anita Gates called it a “fiercely original, thrillingly creepy” film.Watch it on HBO MaxCharles Aznavour and Michele Mercier in “Shoot the Piano Player.”Janus Films‘Shoot the Piano Player’ (1962)The French new wave was borne out of collective cinephilia, and nothing expressed that movie-crazy spirit quite as infectiously as François Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player,” a dazzling 81-minute mash-up of techniques, references and genres. Charles Aznavour stars as a self-effacing pianist who unwittingly becomes embroiled in the criminal scheme of a noir. In this story, however, the bad guys are bungling gangsters and the femme fatale is a waitress with a heart of gold (Marie Dubois). Bosley Crowther called it “a teasing and frequently amusing (or moving) film.” (Also by Truffaut: “The 400 Blows,” “Jules and Jim,” “The Soft Skin.”)Watch it on HBO MaxA scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away.”GKIDS‘Spirited Away’ (2002)The Studio Ghibli maestro Hayao Miyazaki never made an animated fantasy as enchanting, complex and visually lush as this beautiful moral tale of a 10-year-old girl who finds her place in a dreamlike world of witches and spirits. After her parents disappear in an abandoned resort, the girl goes looking for them, but as night falls, the main building turns into a spa for the supernatural, where humans like herself are not welcome. Elvis Mitchell praised “the towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film.” (Also by Miyazaki: “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Princess Mononoke.”)Watch it on HBO Max‘Stranger Than Paradise’ (1984)It may not look like a revolution, with its static black-and-white camerawork and deadpan sensibility, but Jim Jarmusch’s minimalist comedy set a new course for American independent film, changing how stories are told and who they can be about. Jarmusch wrings humor from the modest premise, about a Brooklyn layabout (John Lurie) who plays reluctant host to his Hungarian cousin (Eszter Balint), a woman whose understanding of the country begins and ends with the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “I Put a Spell on You.” Vincent Canby wrote that the film “is something quite special.” (Also by Jarmusch: “Dead Man,” “Down by Law,” “Night on Earth.”)Watch it on HBO MaxA scene from the animated feature “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.”Warner Bros. Pictures‘Teen Titans Go! To the Movies’ (2018)A big-screen version of a no-frills Cartoon Network show like “Teen Titans Go!” may not sound like a promising proposition. But this inspired film goes all out from the very beginning, when our backbench DC heroes, led by the tiny-hand sidekick Robin, introduce themselves in a Beastie Boys-style rap. Envious of all the better-known superheroes getting their own movies, the Teens are thrilled to get their own offer from Tinseltown, but their quest for fame has a villainous catch. The Times’s Ken Jaworowski called it “giddy with in-jokes, meta-moments and quick asides.”Watch it on HBO MaxTina Turner in 1990, as seen in the documentary “Tina.”HBO Documentary Films‘Tina’ (2021)Though often framed as a triumph-over-adversity story, Tina Turner’s life isn’t so easily packaged; even Turner’s extraordinary durability as an artist cannot chase away the abuse and tragedy in her past. Built around a candid Turner interview, this authorized documentary allows her to lay final claim over a life she struggled to control. It also allows us to marvel again at her mental fortitude and her electric stage presence, which was the one constant over the decades. The critic Glenn Kenny called it “not just a summing up but a kind of farewell.”Watch it on HBO Max‘Tokyo Story’ (1953)The most revered of Yasujiro Ozu’s dramas is also one of the most accessible, a profound statement on the grief and laments of getting older and on the widening generation gaps of a newly westernized Japan. When an elderly couple (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) visit their adult children in Tokyo, the kids barely have time for them, but their dead son’s widow (Setsuko Hara) is a welcoming host. The critic Roger Greenspun wrote that the film “understands that a calm reticence may be the true heroism of ordinary old age.” (Also by Ozu: “Late Autumn,” “Late Spring,” “A Story of Floating Weeds.”)Watch it on HBO MaxNino Castelnuovo and Catherine Deneuve in the musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”Zeigeist Films‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ (1964)Few films have been wiser about love than Jacques Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” and none of the other contenders have sung through every word, redefining in glorious terms what could be done with a screen musical. Told in three distinct acts — each in gorgeous primary colors, with unforgettable music by Michel Legrand — the film follows a shop owner’s daughter (Catherine Deneuve) and a mechanic (Nino Castelnuovo) in Normandy as their union is challenged by war, time and other circumstances. Bosley Crowther called it “a cinematic confection” and didn’t mean it kindly. (Also by Demy: “The Young Girls of Rochefort.”)Watch it on HBO MaxClint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman in a scene from “Unforgiven.”Warner Bros./ENCORE‘Unforgiven’ (1992)Clint Eastwood owes his career to playing sharpshooting heroes in Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns like “A Fistful of Dollars” and Don Siegel action films like “Dirty Harry.” But after decades on the job, he decided the time was right to reflect deeply on the violence his characters had wrought. Eastwood directors and stars in this powerful Oscar-winner as a retired gunslinger reluctantly drawn into a bounty hunt for two men who disfigured a prostitute. Vincent Canby called it “a most entertaining western that pays homage to the great tradition of movie westerns.” (Also by Eastwood: “Gran Torino,” “Mystic River,” “Changeling.”)Watch it on HBO Max‘Weekend’ (1968)A turbulent satire for a turbulent era, Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend” uses the greed of a bourgeois couple (Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne) as the starting point for an increasingly surreal and violent road movie that seeks to rattle its audience at every turn. When the couple heads out to the country to collect an inheritance — willing to murder a dying man (and each other), if necessary — their plans are upended in multiple ways, including a series of car crashes. The critic Renata Adler wrote that the film “must be seen for its power, ambition, humor and scenes of really astonishing beauty.” (Also by Godard: “Breathless,” “Masculin Feminin,” “Vivre Sa Vie.”)Watch it on HBO MaxJoan Crawford, left, and Bette Davis in a scene from “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”Warner Bros.‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ (1962)Two queens of Golden Age Hollywood melodramas, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, were brought together for another one in Robert Aldrich’s “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” but their screen personas are thrown for a noir loop in this scabrous treatment of movie stardom. Davis plays a former child star whose delusions of reviving her career are held in check by her wheelchair-bound sister (Crawford), who plots revenge for the accident that crippled her. Bosley Crowther called the actresses “a couple of formidable freaks.”Watch it on HBO MaxMax (Max Records) with the monster Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) in “Where the Wild Things Are.”Matt Nettheim/Warner Bros. Pictures‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (2009)Nothing about Maurice Sendak’s spare, beautifully illustrated storybook classic “Where the Wild Things Are” suggested a feature-length adaptation, but the director Spike Jonze and his co-screenwriter, Dave Eggers, expand the material without losing its essence. This is still the simple story of an angry kid (Max Records) who gets sent to his room after a tantrum and sails off to an island populated by creatures who “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth.” But its emotional spectrum is expanded along with the scale. Manohla Dargis called it “a film that often dazzles during its quietest moments.”Watch it on HBO MaxBruno Ganz in a scene from “Wings of Desire.”Orion Classics‘Wings of Desire’ (1988)For many years, two angels have looked eternally and sympathetically over the citizens of Berlin, but when one (Bruno Ganz) falls in love with a mortal trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), he gives up his wings for the wonderful, terrible privilege of being human. This profound art-house hit from Wim Wenders asks whether eternal life is all it’s cut out to be, and Peter Falk, as a version of himself, does valuable work in breaking the somber mood. Janet Maslin called it the director’s “most ambitious effort yet.” (Also by Wenders: “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Paris, Texas.”)Watch it on HBO MaxClockwise from top, Katie Holmes, Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas in “Wonder Boys.”Frank Connor/Paramount Pictures‘Wonder Boys’ (2000)This shaggy-dog comedy about academia, based on the brisk novel by Michael Chabon, translates effortlessly to the screen, with Michael Douglas ingeniously cast as a Pennsylvania creative writing professor who has been coasting for years on the reputation of his debut book. In the meantime, he gets roped into lives of two admiring students, played by Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes, and into petty escapades involving a dead dog and a stolen piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. A.O. Scott wrote, not all that admiringly, that “the heart of the novel has been carefully preserved.”Watch it on HBO Max More

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      Madison Avenue’s Biggest Event Returns, to a Whole New World

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      In the three years since the television industry’s biggest companies pitched their shows to advertisers in person at the so-called upfronts, the entertainment industry has been flipped on its head.For the first time in three years, the circus is coming back to town.The television industry’s biggest showcase for advertisers, the so-called upfronts, will return to Manhattan landmarks like Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall after the pandemic put the glitzy, in-person galas on hold. Just like in the old days, media executives will make their best pitch to persuade marketers to buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial time in the coming months.But thanks to the vastly changed media industry, many aspects will be radically different. The companies themselves have changed: CBS merged with Viacom and then renamed itself Paramount Global, and WarnerMedia and Discovery completed a megamerger, forming Warner Bros. Discovery. The tech giant YouTube is making its debut on the presentation lineup this week, and there is already intrigue that Netflix could join the fray next year.And instead of unveiling prime-time lineups that will roll out in the fall, media companies are expected to spend a large portion of their time talking up advertising opportunities on streaming services like HBO Max, Peacock, Tubi and Disney+. There’s good reason for that: Advertisers are now allocating closer to 50 percent of their video budgets to streaming, up from around 10 percent before the pandemic, several ad buyers said in interviews. The free ad-supported streaming platforms Tubi and Pluto were highlights for their owners, Fox and Paramount, in the most recent quarter.“The upfronts used to be ‘Here’s 8, 9, 10 p.m. on Monday night’ — I don’t think anybody cares about that anymore,” said Jon Steinlauf, the chief U.S. advertising sales officer for Warner Bros. Discovery. “You’re going to hear more about sports and things like Pluto and less about the new Tuesday night procedural drama.”Stephen Colbert during the 2019 CBS upfront. CBS merged with Viacom and then renamed itself Paramount Global since the last time it was featured on an upfront stage.John P. Filo/CBSThe courtship is no longer one-sided, when reluctant streaming platforms once put a stiff arm to commercials. As subscriber growth starts to slow for many streaming services, advertising — a mainstay of traditional media — is gaining appeal as an alternative source of revenue.Netflix, which resisted ads for years but is aiming to debut an ad-supported tier later this year after a subscriber slump, is expected to play a larger role in future upfronts. Disney+, which has so far continued to increase its subscriber count, said this year that it would also offer a cheaper option buttressed by ads.“Streaming is part of every single conversation that we have — there isn’t an exception based on who your target it is, because whether you’re targeting 18-year-olds or 80-year-olds, they’re all accessing connected TV at this point,” said Dave Sederbaum, the head of video investment at the ad agency Dentsu. Last year, ad buyers spent $5.8 billion on national streaming platforms, an amount dwarfed by the $40 billion allocated to national television, according to the media intelligence firm Magna. But television sales peaked in 2016 and are expected to decline 5 percent this year, compared with a 34 percent surge projected for streaming ad revenue as services offer more preproduced and live content.The rapid changes in viewing habits have caused many marketing executives to shift toward ads placed through automated auctions and “away from legacy models like upfronts” where “advertiser choice is limited,” said Jeff Green, the chief executive of the ad-tech company The Trade Desk.“As advertisers are seeing reach and impact erode from traditional cable television, they are focused on moving to premium streaming content,” he said during his company’s earnings call last week. “Increasingly, this is the most important buy on the media plan.”But streaming will not be the only topic at the upfronts — the events themselves will also be center stage.After two years of upfront pitches recorded from executives’ living rooms, buyers will fly into New York from around the country. They will shuttle among grand venues to watch presentations while seated alongside their competitors. Some venues are asking for proof of vaccination, while masks are a must at some; Disney is requiring a same-day negative Covid test.To many networks, hosting an in-person upfront was nonnegotiable this year.“This show cannot be too big,” Linda Yaccarino, the chairwoman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, said she told producers of the company’s presentation at Radio City Music Hall on Monday. “Having everyone in the room together, there is no surrogate for that.”“Every single brand and marketer and advertiser comes in for the upfront week,” said Rita Ferro, the president of Disney advertising sales and partnerships. “It’s going to look and feel very different because it is very different — there’s so much more that we’re bringing to the stage.”Many of the week’s showcases will eschew a detailed rundown of nightly prime-time schedules and instead offer a more holistic view of available content platforms.Mr. Steinlauf, the Warner Bros. Discovery advertising chief, who is a veteran of several decades of upfronts, described changes that represent “the biggest shift of my career.” He said streaming was “the future, the new frontier,” and heavily watched athletic events were “the new prime time.” Warner Bros. Discovery will make its upfronts debut on Wednesday in front of 3,500 people at Madison Square Garden.Jo Ann Ross, Paramount’s chief advertising revenue officer, said that its event on Wednesday would “show a broader look.” She described it as a “coming-out party as Paramount” for the company formerly known as ViacomCBS.“It will feel different than what it was in the past,” she said.On Tuesday, Disney will abandon its usual upfront home at Lincoln Center and move to a space in the Lower East Side at Pier 36. The presentation will feature its three streaming platforms — Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ — sharing a stage for the first time. NBC Universal will highlight its technological capabilities, such as data collection, while also drumming up its Peacock streaming platform, even though the service already made a pitch earlier this month during NewFronts, an event for digital companies courting Madison Avenue.Linda Yaccarino of NBCUniversal said that “having everyone in the room together” this year for the company’s upfront was the only way to go.Tawni Bannister for The New York TimesThe competition could mean more demands from advertisers, like the ability to back out of commitments and lower thresholds for how much buyers must spend.“It’s basic economics — there are now more options available to media buyers and so you’re going to see a lot more willingness to be flexible,” said David Marine, the chief marketing officer of the real estate company Coldwell Banker.Potential headaches for advertisers this year could include Russia’s war in Ukraine, global supply issues and steep inflation, according to Magna. But low unemployment and other signs of strength from the U.S. economy, along with the coming midterm elections, are expected to feed a surge in ad spending.How the upfronts address those concerns, along with deeper movements in the industry, “will be telling,” said Katie Klein, the chief investment officer at the agency PHD.“There’s always going to be room for the upfront, there’s always going to be a need for it,” she said. “But it’s going to evolve as our industry is evolving.” More

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      Mahmood and Blanco’s Eurovision Song Shows Italy’s L.G.B.T.Q. Progress

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      The love song, and its video showing the artist Mahmood embracing another man, has been well received in a nation with a spotty history on L.G.B.T.Q. rights.MILAN — In February, the artists Mahmood and Blanco turned to each other onstage at Italy’s national song competition and sang, “I’d like to love you, but I’m always wrong.” It was the refrain of “Brividi” (translated as “Chills”), a song about the vulnerability of love, as experienced by all people — regardless of gender, identity or sexuality.When the song won at that competition, the Sanremo contest, and became Italy’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the unexpected happened: There wasn’t much pushback.The two after winning the Sanremo music contest in Italy in February.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was some grumbling from a socially conservative politician about what he called L.G.B.T. “domination” at the contest, and disdain that Mahmood performed one evening wearing a garter, but Alessandro Mahmoud, known as Mahmood, had been expecting a bigger response, he said in a recent interview.When the musician — who was born in Italy to an Italian mother and an Egyptian father — won the national song contest in 2019, anti-immigration comments followed. But this year, even those polemics normally trumpeted by conservative politicians did not flare up. The 29-year-old artist saw the muted criticism for “Brividi” as a sign that “something has happened in Italian society.”Italy has long been influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, which for generations considered homosexuality as a taboo topic to be either ignored or shunned. In a 2005 text approved by Benedict XVI, who was pope at the time, homosexuality was described as “not a sin” but essentially “an intrinsic moral evil.”L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Italy have advanced after decades of campaigning, but some legal challenges remain. Same-sex civil unions were legalized in 2016, years after other European countries, but same-sex marriage is not legal, nor can someone in a same-sex civil union legally adopt his or her partner’s biological child.On Being Transgender in AmericaPhalloplasty: The surgery, used to construct a penis, has grown more popular among transgender men. But with a steep rate of complications, it remains a controversial procedure.Elite Sports: The case of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has stirred a debate about the nature of athleticism in women’s sports.Transgender Youth: A photographer documented the lives of transgender youth. She shared some thoughts on what she saw.Corporate World: What is it like to transition while working for Wall Street? A Goldman Sachs’ employee shares her experience.So when two men sang a love song, clearly engaging with each other, as part of a cherished national competition, it was a first. The track “normalizes what should have always been normal,” Mahmood said.The song’s video more explicitly shows Mahmood tenderly embracing a man, while Blanco sings to a woman. A video of the song on Mahmood’s official YouTube page has been viewed more than 55 million times.Italian society’s approach to sexuality is changing. “Sexual orientation no longer has any importance, nor is it important to label oneself anymore,” said Aldo Cazzullo, a columnist in the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera. In the 1950s and 1960s, many gay people in Italy were not open about their sexuality, Cazzullo said. This was followed by an era of coming out and empowerment, and “now there’s no longer the need to say anything,” he said. He pointed out that two of Italy’s southern regions had voted to elect gay men as regional presidents.Mahmood said that although his songs speak volumes about who he is, he doesn’t define his sexuality: “It makes no sense to make distinctions anymore.”Blanco, the stage name of Riccardo Fabbriconi, 19, said that his “generation is much more open” and that people his age no longer thought in terms of gender identity. In just two years, he has gone from posting videos “singing in my underwear in my bedroom,” he said, to a multicity Italian summer tour that sold out in 72 hours.And Blanco said he also saw Italy as being “more open in general — I hope.”A recent headline in the newspaper La Stampa in Turin captured this sentiment: “Blanco, son of the fluid century, his generation will save us.”“My generation is much more open,” said Blanco, 19, left. Mahmood, 29, says he doesn’t define his sexuality.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesOn Tuesday evening, the Italian hosts for the Eurovision Song Contest semifinal broadcast included Cristiano Malgioglio, a songwriter and popular television personality also known for his outlandish couture, who riffed on his love life. Speaking of the five countries that automatically get into the final — Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Britain — he quipped, “I have a boyfriend in every nation.” He was a host last year, too.Eurovision has always “had a large L.G.B.T.Q. element in its fandom,” said Catherine Baker, a historian at the University of Hull who has written about the competition. After significant rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in the late 1990s and the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, which banned discrimination against people on the grounds of sexual orientation, “Europe became associated with the idea of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and symbolically that had an impact on Eurovision, even if it wasn’t organized by the European Union,” Baker said.The competition has also long been a trailblazer when it comes to L.G.B.T.Q. representation onstage, featuring artists like Iceland’s Paul Oscar, Israel’s Dana International and Finland’s Saara Aalto over the years.L.G.B.T.Q. people face openly hostile environments in several European countries, including Poland, Hungary and Russia. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the powerful head of the Russian Orthodox Church, recently justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by claiming that it was part of a struggle against ideals imposed by liberal foreigners that included gay pride parades.Franco Grillini, a prominent Italian L.G.B.T.Q. rights activist, said a song like “Brividi” would once have been “unimaginable” at a festival that normally has Italians glued to their television screens.In the past, homosexuality could also hurt a musical career in Italy, he said, citing the case of Umberto Bindi, a talented, gay singer-songwriter who caused a scandal in Sanremo in 1961 by wearing a pinkie ring (then a presumed sign of homosexuality). He never got the recognition he deserved because “he was brutally discriminated” against, Grillini said.But democracies have a way of righting wrongs, according to Angelo Pezzana, another L.G.B.T.Q. rights activist. “It’s always been like this. Remember that not a century ago, women went to jail for the right to vote,” he said. In Italy, women only got the right to vote in 1945. The Mahmood-Blanco duet “was a sign that things had changed in a positive way,” he said.The track “normalizes what should have always been normal,” Mahmood said of the Eurovision song.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesThat said, Italy’s record on equal rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people remains spotty. Apart from not having fair representation when it comes to marriage and adoption, in October, the Senate rejected a bill meant to make violence against L.G.B.T.Q. people a hate crime, a label that would have meant harsher penalties. Critics blamed the lack of consensus both on political bickering as well as on Vatican interference, given that a few months earlier the Vatican had openly opposed the bill, saying it infringed upon guaranteed religious liberties.“Italy is still profoundly linked to the Vatican, which conditions Parliament,” said Grillini, who was a lawmaker for seven years.Even under Pope Francis, the message has been mixed. Shortly after his election in 2013, Francis said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” and he has continued to encourage the church to be more welcoming toward the L.G.B.T.Q. faithful. But since then, the Vatican has rejected the notion that gender identity can be fluid, and it has reaffirmed its opposition to same-sex marriage.But at least at the Sanremo contest, old prejudices didn’t seem to apply.“All my songs speak of my way of experiencing love and sex,” Mahmood said. “The least an artist can do is give an example.” More

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      Netflix Tells Employees Ads May Come by the End of 2022

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      Netflix could introduce its lower-priced ad-supported tier by the end of the year, a more accelerated timeline than originally indicated, the company told employees in a recent note.In the note, Netflix executives said they were aiming to introduce the ad tier in the final three months of the year, said two people who shared details of the communication on the condition of anonymity to describe internal company discussions. The note also said Netflix planned to begin cracking down on password sharing among its subscriber base around the same time, the people said.Last month, Netflix stunned the media industry and Madison Avenue when it revealed that it would begin offering a lower-priced subscription featuring ads, after years of publicly stating that commercials would never be seen on the streaming platform.But Netflix is facing significant business challenges. In announcing first-quarter earnings last month, Netflix said it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year — the first time that has happened in a decade — and expected to lose two million more in the months to come. Since the subscriber announcement, Netflix’s share price has dropped sharply, wiping away roughly $70 billion in the company’s market capitalization.Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, told investors that the company would examine the possibility of introducing an advertising-supported platform and that it would try to “figure it out over the next year or two.”The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors continue to expand. What explains its poor performance?A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.The recent note to staff signaled that the timeline has sped up.“Yes, it’s fast and ambitious and it will require some trade-offs,” the note said.A Netflix spokeswoman declined to comment.Netflix offers a variety of payment tiers for streaming access; its most popular plan costs $15.49 a month. The new ad-supported tier will cost less. Other streaming services have similar plans. HBO Max, for instance, offers a commercial-free service for $15 a month, and charges $10 a month for the service with advertising.Indeed, in the note to employees, Netflix executives invoked their competitors, saying HBO and Hulu have been able to “maintain strong brands while offering an ad-supported service.”“Every major streaming company excluding Apple has or has announced an ad-supported service,” the note said. “For good reason, people want lower-priced options.”Netflix has discussed its interest in building out an advertising infrastructure externally as well, including with a company called The Trade Desk, which helps advertisers place ads on various internet-enabled platforms, said a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to describe them. The Trade Desk counts David Wells, the former chief financial officer of Netflix, as a board member, and has been in touch with Netflix for years, this person said, but discussions ramped up recently, after Netflix said publicly that it would create an advertising tier.Last month, Netflix also announced that it intended to begin charging higher prices to subscribers who shared their account with several people.“So if you’ve got a sister, let’s say, that’s living in a different city — you want to share Netflix with her, that’s great,” Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief operating officer, said on the company’s earnings call. “We’re not trying to shut down that sharing, but we’re going to ask you to pay a bit more to be able to share with her.”Mr. Peters said the company would go “through a year or so of iterating” on password sharing before it rolled out a plan.In the note to employees, Netflix executives said the advertising-supported tier would be introduced “in tandem with our broader plans to charge for sharing.”Tiffany Hsu More

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      in Movies

      In Bid to Boost Peacock, Universal Sending 3 Movies Straight to Streaming

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      The move is not only an attempt to attract subscribers but an acknowledgment that releasing some films theatrically has become more of a gamble.Donna Langley, the head of Universal’s Motion Picture Entertainment Group, stepped on the stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas last week and reaffirmed her commitment to movie theaters.“Theatrical will always be the cornerstone of our business,” she told the crowd of theater owners gathered for the annual CinemaCon industry convention, adding, “Cheers to that.”It was not just lip service. With more than 25 films set for release in 2022, Universal has at least 10 more than any other major Hollywood studio. It will release a combination of blockbusters (“Jurassic World Dominion”), family fare (“Minions: The Rise of Gru”) and original bets (Jordan Peele’s “Nope” and “Beast,” starring Idris Elba), operating on the premise that a movie’s value begins with its debut in theaters.Yet on Monday, as part of a presentation for advertisers, Kelly Campbell, the president of NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock, will announce that three new movies produced by Universal Pictures will head straight to the streaming service when they debut in 2023.They include a biopic about LeBron James based on his memoir, “Shooting Stars”; a remake of John Woo’s 1989 crime drama “The Killer,” starring Omar Sy; and “Praise This,” a music-competition feature set in the world of youth choir.For Peacock, which last week announced that it ended the first quarter of the year with more than 13 million paid subscribers and 28 million monthly active accounts in the United States, representing a growth of 4 million users, the additional film content is crucial to its strategy. It needs to find a way to compete with the bigger services like Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max, at a time when streaming subscriber numbers seem to be plateauing.Ms. Langley greenlit all three pictures, and had to make the calls to tell the filmmakers about the change in distribution strategy.“I think everybody sort of woke up and smelled the coffee during the pandemic and recognized that not all movies are created equal,” Ms. Langley said in an interview, adding that the filmmakers were still interested in partnering with the studio, even if it meant going straight to Peacock. “It’s a big deal for Peacock to have these movies. They are events for them. And we got yeses, so I think it was a satisfying rationale.”“Theatrical will always be the cornerstone of our business,” Donna Langley, the head of Universal’s Motion Picture Entertainment Group, told theater owners last week.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe three movies also reflect the type of audience Peacock seems to be attracting so far: younger and more diverse than those who gravitate toward the other legacy businesses run by Comcast, Peacock’s parent company.“What you’ll see with these films is that they are broadly appealing, but also track towards that young, diverse audience that represents the streaming audience of today, the generation of consumers who are choosing streaming as their primary source of entertainment,” Ms. Campbell said in an interview.Despite lagging behind some of its streaming competitors, Peacock has experienced success this year. February was a high point, when viewers could see the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, the simultaneous release of the Jennifer Lopez-starring film “Marry Me” in theaters and on the service, and the debut of “Bel-Air,” a dramatic reimagining of the 1990s hit television series “The Prince of Bel-Air” that starred Will Smith. (Season two is in development.)“Retention on our service after airing all of this special content in such a concentrated period of time was well above our expectation,” Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, said in an earnings call last week. “We have seen a 25 percent increase in hours of engagement year-over-year.”When the pandemic upended the theater business, Universal Pictures experimented with a variety of distribution methods for its movies. There was the purely theatrical like “Fast 9: The Fast Saga,” which earned $173 million when it was released last summer when coronavirus cases were lower. And there was “Sing 2,” which earned over $160 million domestically after being released in December, before going to premium video-on-demand just 17 days after its debut in theaters. The company has also experimented with simultaneous release, debuting “Halloween Kills” and the sequel to “Boss Baby” in theaters and on Peacock during the height of the pandemic. The company will do so again in two weeks with the remake of the Stephen King horror film “Firestarter.”“There’s no one size fits all,” Ms. Langley said. “It really is about looking at the individual movies on the one hand and then also at our growth engine Peacock, and doing what’s best in any given moment, depending on what’s going on in the marketplace. I’m hopeful that this stabilizes over time as the theatrical landscape stabilizes. But until then, we do have this optionality.”Like every other studio executive, Ms. Langley is involved in the complicated calculus of determining what movies fit where in a world where the theatrical box office is down 45 percent from what it was in 2019. It is “a box office that is in decline,” Ms. Langley said, with theatergoing expected to still be down at least 15 percent from its prepandemic level in 2023.In speaking specifically to the three films she chose to put straight on Peacock, she described them as “movies we love that a decade ago would have been no-brainers” to make and release in theaters.But audiences have more choice now about when and where they watch films, and it can be more difficult to convince them that a film is worth seeing in a theater.“We still want to make these movies because we believe in the stories, we believe in the storytellers and we think that these are great pieces of entertainment,” she said. “We have the ability to be able to avail ourselves of our streaming platform. And we think that they are events, actually, to be released into the home, very specifically for the Peacock audience.”Peacock is buying the films from Universal Pictures, a portion of the $3 billion it intends to spend on content in 2022, ramping up to $5 billion in the next couple of years.Ms. Langley says that while 2023 will feature three straight-to-Peacock films, she hopes release seven to 10 films that way in the coming years, films that will all be developed and produced by the same Universal creative team that is behind the “Jurassic Park” and “Fast and Furious” franchises.“Peacock’s future depends on having good content and our future depends on having flexibility in our distribution models,” Ms. Langley said. “So our agendas, ultimately, are aligned. So, yes, there’s debate about any one particular title or something they might want that we can’t deliver or vice versa but that’s the stuff of working inside a big corporation.” More

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      in Television

      A French Hit on Netflix Changes Its Language and Streaming Service

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      “Call My Agent!,” set at a Parisian talent agency, was a cult favorite during the pandemic. But the English-language adaptation will be on Sundance Now and AMC+.Four bumbling talent agents at risk of losing their business because of poor financial planning. A secret daughter interested in a career in the entertainment industry. Cameos by famous actors playing themselves. One spoiled dog. This is the formula that made the French show “Call My Agent!,” about a Parisian talent agency, into a global hit once it began appearing on Netflix in 2016.On Friday, the British version of the show, titled “Ten Percent” and set at a London talent agency, will debut. But instead of airing on Netflix, the eight-episode series will premiere on Sundance Now and AMC+ in the United States, and Amazon U.K. in Britain, Canada and six other English-speaking territories.Basing an English-language TV show on a popular hit from another country is a tried-and-true convention in the U.S. entertainment industry. Think “Homeland” and “Euphoria” — or even “The Office,” which began life with Ricky Gervais in England before being adapted into the long-running American version starring Steve Carell.“Ten Percent” was conceived in much the same way. David Davoli, who heads the television division for Bron Studios, negotiated, along with London’s Headline Pictures, for the English rights to “Call My Agent!” in 2017, after the show debuted on Netflix but before it truly caught on with English-speaking audiences. According to Mr. Davoli, it was already doing “bonkers numbers on French television,” where it debuted in 2015. Yet it was before “the dawn of international television where people were more comfortable ingesting foreign language stuff,” he said.What makes “Ten Percent” unique is that usually the English-language version is adapted from a show not widely seen in the United States. Not so with “Call My Agent!,” which became a cult favorite with American audiences during the pandemic. The show has run for four seasons on Netflix — with talk of a possible fifth to come — and inspired a film and adaptations in India and Turkey. Its star, Camille Cottin, could be seen in the films “House of Gucci” and “Stillwater” last year.“Call My Agent!” became available on Netflix in 2016.Christophe Brachet/NetflixNetflix won’t give details on the show’s viewership numbers, but the company’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos referred to the series in his January earnings call as proof that Netflix’s investment in international programming was paying off. It, along with “Money Heist” and “Squid Game,” proved to streaming companies that if a show is good enough, subtitles and cultural specificity are not a deterrent for viewers. And if that’s the case, why spend money on an English-language version? The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors are continuing to expand.A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.In contrast, “Ten Percent” will appear on a much smaller platform, one with nine million subscribers, just 12 percent of Netflix’s 74.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada. (It stars Jack Davenport as the de facto head of the agency and will feature cameos from well-known British actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and David Oyelowo.)Netflix had the opportunity to buy “Ten Percent,” as did every other streaming service in the United States, but passed. It declined to comment on its decision. Instead, Sundance Now came up with an attractive offer and licensed the show.“We’re very happy to be there,” Mr. Davoli said of his relationship with AMC Networks, which owns Sundance Now. “I like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I think we’re going to get way more attention there. Marketing is half the battle, and on some of the bigger streamers they’re up on Friday and gone on Monday.”AMC Networks, which owns a handful of niche streaming options including AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AllBlk, will also air the show weekly on its BBC America channel, two days after the episodes become available through streaming.“We jumped at the chance to make Sundance Now the U.S. home of the British remake,” said Shannon Cooper, vice president of programming for Sundance Now. “This is such a fun watch, whether you’ve seen the original or not.”This is a rocky moment for streaming, with Netflix’s stock plummeting after last week’s announcement that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year and expected to lose two million beyond that in the second. Despite the deluge of content arriving weekly on the various services, consumers are happy to end a subscription if the latest offerings aren’t striking their fancy.Helena Bonham Carter, right, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in “Ten Percent.” Lydia Leonard is one of the show’s stars.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowAccording to a recent survey by Deloitte, 37 percent of consumers in the United States added or canceled a streaming subscription in the last six months, a churn figure that has been consistent since 2020. The primary reasons they cited were price concerns and lack of new content. The return of a favorite show, according to Deloitte’s survey, is a key reason customers would subscribe to a service, or resubscribe to one they recently abandoned. That’s why a show like “Ten Percent,” which has the potential to lure viewers who enjoyed “Call My Agent!,” is an attractive purchase for an upstart streaming service.“It’s an appealing proposition for any of these distributors,” said Dan Erlij, partner at United Talent Agency and co-head of the television literary department. “There’s so much stuff that’s constantly premiering. How do you make sure that people are aware of it? Bus ads and billboards only take you so far. And it’s expensive. So if you know that there’s a word of mouth built in already, I think that can be really helpful.”The executive producer of “Ten Percent” is John Morton, best known for his comedy “W1A,” which satirizes the BBC. In a recent interview, he said he was cognizant of the high stakes he was facing when he took the job of adapting the beloved series. Attracted to the show’s “warm heart” and its ability to connect its audience to its fallible main characters, Mr. Morton said, he was intimidated by the idea of “starting again with something that’s already so good.”His strategy was to go back and rewatch the first season of “Call My Agent!” in its entirety but then never refer to it again. As of the interview, he had yet to finish the third season and hadn’t watched the fourth.The ultimate goal was to take the essence of “Call My Agent!” and make it specifically British, capturing the diversity of London, from its architecture to its people.“London is chaotic — architecturally, logistically, creatively — and that throws up wonderful things and also terrible things,” Mr. Morton said, adding that, as in “Call My Agent!,” the talent agency has a rooftop. But rather than looking out over a pristine Parisian night sky, this roof “looks out over a certain sort of unconnected chimneys.”The cast of the British version is also more diverse, with the secret daughter from the original now played by the British actress Hiftu Quasem, who is of Bengali descent, and the bumbling agent, Dan, portrayed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, a British actor of Sri Lankan descent. Yet the archetypes from the original prevail. For example, Ms. Cottin’s character, a hard-charging lesbian agent, is now played by Lydia Leonard, and her character’s frenetic love life is also complicated by her career ambitions.Mr. Davoli — who since becoming the head of Bron TV has sold three other co-productions to streaming companies, including “The Defeated” to Netflix and “Kin” to AMC — admits that the market for format deals has become more challenged in recent years.“The thing that’s most important that I’ve learned over the last four years is the quality bar cannot be messed with,” he said. “The only way to protect the investment is to ensure that you’re creatively making content that can sell into the U.S., because our audiences are so sophisticated now. They won’t stick around for stuff that’s not rising above a certain bar.” More

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      Do You Skip Intro?

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      Elyssa Dudley and Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWesley worries the “skip intro” button is killing the TV theme song. When we skip, we’re denying “the possibility of having this connection with a show that becomes bigger and more meaningful than the show itself.”He takes his concern to his friend Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, music critic and MacArthur “genius grant” winner. Together, they explore their childhood memories of “Good Times,” “The Wonder Years” and “The Jeffersons.” Then, producer Hans Buetow unearths a rendition of a theme song that blows their minds — and they vow never to hit “skip intro” on it.Can you help us identify this choir?On today’s episode, Wesley and Hanif are played this video of a choir singing the “Good Times” theme song. Now, we need your help: Can you identify the choir?We have confirmed that the singers are backstage at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., but who are they? We’d love to find out and get in touch with them.If you have any ideas or information about the choir, please email us at stillprocessing@nytimes.com.Theme songs as beautiful wallpaperHanif shares a story about how a photographer visiting his home was struck by the blue wallpaper in his front entryway. Before the pandemic, Hanif would travel more frequently, so coming home and crossing his entryway was “a real beautiful experience,” he says. But now, he’s so consumed by errands — setting down groceries, making sure his dog doesn’t run out — that he’d forgotten about his wallpaper.“The theme song acts as almost the wallpaper,” Hanif says. “When I do notice it, if it’s something that I can pause and notice and I enjoy it, I’m thrilled. But otherwise, it’s kind of like a border between me and something that I have to do, or something that I feel like I am driven to do. But it is nice to notice it when it comes along if it’s wonderful enough.”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrAssistant Managing Editor: Sam Dolnick More