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HILLSBOROUGH, Calif. — Live from his home kitchen in the Bay Area, Martin Yan flashed a smile, raised his cleaver and chanted the catchphrase that the 150 or so people watching him online were clamoring to hear: “If Yan can cook, so can you!” More
You streamed it. Now you can buy it at Netflix.shop, a new site that will offer everything from a “Lupin” side table to a “Yasuke” clock.There will be “Lupin” pillows and Netflix-branded boxer shorts.There will be caps, necklaces, charms and hoodies, all of it for sale at Netflix.shop, a site that goes live on Thursday, when the world’s biggest streaming company plants a flag in the territory of e-commerce. More
#styln-signup .styln-signup-wrapper { max-width: calc(100% – 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e2e2e2; } If you want a clear picture of the state of the media industry in upheaval, Comcast offers a good snapshot. The company, which includes NBC, Universal Pictures, several theme parks, and the Peacock streaming service, beat […] More
The streaming service reported the addition of four million new customers for the first quarter, below the six million it had forecast. More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to ReadNew Books to Watch For This Month25 Book Review GreatsHow to Raise a ReaderListen: The Book Review PodcastAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHarlan Coben, Suburban Dad With 75 Million Books in PrintWith a 33rd novel on the way and deals with Netflix, Amazon and Apple, the prolific author writes in Ubers, at Stop & Shop and just about anywhere else he can.“Every book I write, I still say, each time, ‘This book sucks, and the one I did before was great. How did I lose it?’ And then five minutes later, I’m like, ‘This book is great!’” Harlan Coben said.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMarch 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRIDGEWOOD, N.J. — The thriller writer Harlan Coben has some free advice for anyone who cares to ask: “If it produces pages: good. If it doesn’t produce pages: bad.”With 32 published books and an estimated 75 million copies in print worldwide, he has produced many pages during the course of his career. His 33rd novel, “Win,” will be published by Grand Central on Tuesday. He recently added streaming media to his portfolio in the form of a 14-project deal with Netflix.For all his success, Coben, 59, remains as unfussy as his favorite writing tip. A 6-foot-4 former college basketball player with a Bic’d head and an oeuvre full of kidnapping, murder and narrative twists, he is also a menschy suburban dad who likes to talk about his four children and dotes on his two shaggy Havanese, Winslow and Laszlo, who trail him around his New Jersey house like eager little mops.“You meet him, and he’s really tall and maybe a little intimidating,” said his eldest daughter, Charlotte Coben. “But I’ll walk down the stairs, and he’ll be lying on the floor with the dogs around him going, ‘Who’s the cutest dog in the world? Who’s a puppy? Who’s a puppy?’”“Win,” the latest from Harlan Coben, is out on March 16.Harlan Coben met his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben, when they were starting power forwards on their respective teams at Amherst College. (“She was better than I was,” he said.) They celebrated the 39th anniversary of their first kiss on Feb. 10.They married in 1988, and about a decade later moved to an old Victorian in Ridgewood. The gray and white home is accented with friendly touches of royal blue, but from the curb it still looks like it could be the set for a vintage horror movie. (When you Google “Victorian houses,” one of the related questions supplied by the algorithm is: “Why are Victorian houses so creepy?”) The house was maybe a little “on the nose” as a place for a mystery writer to live, he said, but he and his wife bought it anyway and have lived there ever since.Because Armstrong-Coben is a pediatrician — today, she is also a senior associate dean for admissions at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University — before the pandemic, she had a daily commute. Coben stayed home, so he drove the kids to school, picked them up and took them wherever they needed to be.And in between, he would write.“I’m not great at writing in the house, though I’m better now,” Coben said in an interview last month, nearing the one-year anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdowns in the United States. “I would take them off to whatever school, and then I would find a coffee shop or a library or any weird place. I keep changing places. Most writers have a set routine, a set place. My routine is to not have a routine.”While one of his sons was in high school, Coben spent six months writing at a Stop & Shop deli counter with a coffee stand next to it. “I came home smelling like olive loaf,” he said, but the pages were good. For his book “The Stranger,” he spent three weeks taking Ubers everywhere he went because he found he was writing well in the back seat. He finished the book that way.“I like to ride a horse until the horse collapses, and then I look for another horse,” he said.Siobhan Finneran and Kadiff Kirwan in “The Stranger,” a Netflix series based on Coben’s 2015 novel.Credit…NetflixCoben starts each book with an idea, rather than a character, and by the time he sits down to write, he already has the ending in his head, a habit that he said allows him to plot out better surprises for the reader. He takes about nine months to write a novel, with the ending often pouring out of him because he has imagined it for so long. He said he wrote the last 40 pages of “Win” in a day.“At the end of a book, I’m crazy,” he said. “I grow a playoff beard. I don’t shower.”“Win” is a new spin on an old franchise for Coben. The title character, Windsor Horne Lockwood III, has been the sidekick in Coben’s 11-part Myron Bolitar series since the first of those books was published in 1995.Coben describes Myron as “me with wish fulfillment.” They are both tall Jewish guys who play basketball, he said, but Myron is funnier, better on the court, smarter, stronger. The character of Win was originally modeled on Coben’s best friend from Amherst, a handsome blond who was a member of all the right golf clubs.In the new book, Win acts as a rich vigilante untangling a murder mystery that has ensnared his extended family. It is peppered with Coben’s customary bombshells and surprises, from dark secrets to a fearsome gangster who has lost his taste for revenge, and that page-turning special something that keeps readers up too late.Coben tries to stick to a schedule of publishing at least a book a year, a timetable he has kept up even as he’s added a new dimension to his working life: TV and streaming. In addition to Netflix, he has deals with Amazon Studios, MGM International and Apple.Coben in his New Jersey home. He tries to stick to publishing a book a year, a schedule he has maintained even as he’s struck streaming deals.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe Netflix deal takes advantage of Coben’s international appeal. He sells more books abroad than in the United States, he said, and is one of the biggest contemporary writers in France, period, according to his agent.“I’m the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction,” he proclaimed from the sunroom at the back of his home, Winslow and Laszlo asleep in warm patches of light near his feet.His 2007 novel “The Woods” (as Coben described it, “20 years ago, four kids disappeared, and now one of them comes back”) became a show on Netflix Poland last year. “The Innocent,” from his 2005 book about a former inmate’s attempt to shed his past, was produced by Netflix Spain. “The Stranger,” from 2015, was produced by Netflix in the United Kingdom, as was “Stay Close,” from 2012, which is filming now.Coben is an executive producer on these shows, not a writer, but his daughter Charlotte has written for “The Stranger” and “Stay Close.” “Adding that professional aspect was a lot easier than I think either of us expected,” she said of working with her father on the Netflix shows. “He’s so supportive of my ideas, but not the bad ones. I appreciate that.”Larry Tanz, who oversees Netflix’s original programming for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that most people who have achieved Coben’s level of success tend to surround themselves with associates and handlers who get things done. But Coben does the work himself, Tanz said. He comes up with the ideas, he watches the rough cuts of scenes, he joins the phone calls.“He’s very flexible, and you don’t see that a lot with creators of his stature,” Tanz said. “There’s quite a lot that gets added or modified from the original book, and Harlan is always like, ‘Great, I love it!’”“Stay Close” started filming in the north of England last month, Covid protections and all. Coben regularly jumps on calls to field questions from actors or the writers’ room, even as he works on his 34th novel. “It does not get easier,” he said from behind a black mask decorated with a pink, red and white XO pattern.“Every book I write, I still say, each time, ‘This book sucks, and the one I did before was great. How did I lose it?’ And then five minutes later, I’m like, ‘This book is great!’” he said. “All that insecurity goes on and on and on. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. I think when that goes away, it’s probably time to stop.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The British Royal FamilyInterview and FalloutWhat Meghan and Harry DisclosedWhat We LearnedMemories of DianaAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Oprah’s Meghan and Harry Special Won’t Have a Streaming HomeThe three participants’ ties to Netflix and Apple, along with Ms. Winfrey’s desire to reach a big live-viewing audience, paved the way to an old-school deal with CBS.Oprah Winfrey’s interview of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry was a rarity in the age of streaming: a cultural event powered by network TV.Credit…Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesEdmund Lee and March 9, 2021, 6:28 p.m. ETOprah Winfrey pulled off what has become a rare television event: the tell-all interview that turns into a cultural moment. On Sunday, an audience of more than 17 million watched bombshell revelations tumble out of the mouths of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry as they described their lives under the palace gaze in a two-hour CBS special that rivaled any of the royal dramas on the Netflix series “The Crown.”Social-media discussion of the show has continued since the credits rolled, leaving many people who missed it wondering where they could stream it. For the next 30 days, the special will be available on CBS.com and the CBS app. But after that, it will not have a home on any streaming platform.That’s because, from the start of negotiations, Ms. Winfrey’s company, Harpo Productions, the owner of the program, envisioned the special as something suited to a big broadcast network, three people with knowledge of the deal said. Harpo did not even attempt to sell the streaming rights to Netflix or Paramount+, the streaming platform owned by CBS’s parent company, ViacomCBS, the people said.Harpo’s old-school strategy of avoiding subscription-video-on-demand services came about partly because of the complications presented by Ms. Winfrey’s deal to make programs for Apple’s streaming platform, AppleTV+, the people said. Ms. Winfrey’s AppleTV+ deal includes an interview series, “The Oprah Conversation,” which has featured Barack Obama, Dolly Parton and Mariah Carey. Another wrinkle was the roughly $100 million production deal that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry struck last year with Netflix, the people said.Ms. Winfrey’s company also did not approach cable networks when seeking the right venue for the special, the people said. Hoping for the greatest possible reach, she sought a deal with one of the major broadcast networks, which do not require a subscription and consistently draw the largest audiences for live viewing. Harpo also liked the idea of appearing in the Sunday night slot after “60 Minutes,” the highly rated CBS News show where Ms. Winfrey was a special correspondent in 2017 and 2018, the people said.As part of the $7 million deal, ViacomCBS won something valuable: the rights to broker international distribution on behalf of Harpo. The program aired Monday on ITV in Britain and will be available in more than 80 countries.Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, cut a deal with Ms. Winfrey in 2019 to produce a series on mental health. Credit…Joe Pugliese/Harpo ProductionsMs. Winfrey revealed during the interview that she had spent about three years trying to land the exclusive. Along the way, she went into business with Meghan and her husband. Adding to the jumble of media alliances, the couple in 2019 cut a deal with Ms. Winfrey to produce a documentary series about mental health that is scheduled to stream on AppleTV+.Some industry observers were surprised by the CBS deal because of another corporate entanglement: Ms. Winfrey’s long relationship with Discovery Communications, the cable giant that invested in her cable network, OWN, over a decade ago. David Zaslav, Discovery’s intensely competitive chief executive, decided to continue the investment even after OWN experienced growing pains early on. The company now controls the network, which has become a ratings success. Discovery also recently launched its own streamer, Discovery+, where Ms. Winfrey hosts an interview series, “Super Soul.” (The company bought advertising time on the CBS special and provided a commercial featuring Ms. Winfrey.)It turns out that digital television, originally meant as a convenient alternative to clunky cable, can be just as knotty and cumbrous as the business it’s trying to replace.The morning after her interview with the Sussexes, Ms. Winfrey appeared on “CBS This Morning,” a program anchored by her close friend, Gayle King, where she presented extra material that didn’t make the special. CBS announced on Tuesday that it will show the special again Friday night at 8.John Koblin More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsCredit…Yoshi SodeokaHow the Pandemic Stalled Peak TVWhere’s “Succession”? “Atlanta”? After the number of scripted shows fell for the first time in a decade, Hollywood hopes to satisfy a restless audience with less costly fare.Credit…Yoshi SodeokaSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 28, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ETWhat would we be watching in an alternate, pandemic-free universe?One choice would be the third season of “Atlanta,” the critically adored show created by Donald Glover, which would have made its debut a few weeks ago. Viewers would have also learned the latest in the saga of the Roy family on “Succession,” or could have tuned in to see the portrait of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton in the new installment of “American Crime Story.”The new seasons of those shows were postponed, and they won’t be available any time soon. The pandemic created a break in the boom time known as Peak TV, a gilded entertainment age of limitless home-viewing options ushered in by deep-pocketed tech companies and the cable networks desperate to keep up.Nearly a year ago, when the full force of the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, home viewing became the main leisure activity for those who found themselves working remotely and unable to go out in their off hours.Cable news scored record ratings. Unscripted series like “Tiger King” and “Too Hot to Handle” became some of Netflix’s most-watched shows. Vintage escapist favorites like “The Golden Girls” had a resurgence.As the virus continued to ravage the country, viewers found relief in new seasons of “The Mandalorian” and “The Crown,” as well as newcomers like “Bridgerton” and “The Queen’s Gambit.”But pandemic-related production delays, which all but shut down the filming of scripted shows and films for much of 2020, have started to have an effect. The number of premieres of American scripted shows nose-dived in the second half of last year, a trend that is likely to continue for several months. And in 2020, for the first time in a decade, there were fewer new scripted shows to watch than in the previous year.“The disruption of the pipeline is being manifested now,” said Matt Roush, a senior critic at TV Guide Magazine. “Now there are only a couple things a month to get excited about, versus getting excited a couple times a week before.”A Sudden DropThe rise of cable put a dent in the traditional broadcast TV schedule, one of fall premieres and springtime finales, that had dictated viewing habits for decades. And the entry of Netflix and other streaming services smashed what was left of the old model. Audiences got used to new shows popping up all the time.From 2009 to 2019, the number of scripted shows in the United States went up each year, according to the research department of the cable network FX, one of the few organizations that kept track of the boom. In 2009, there were 210 scripted shows, according to FX. By 2019, there were 532, a 153 percent jump.Before the pandemic, 2020 looked as if it would be the biggest year ever, thanks, in part, to the arrival of the streamers Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, HBO Max and Peacock.From January to May, 214 adult-oriented American scripted shows had their premieres, according to Ampere, a research firm that tracks television distribution and production activity. That number was more than all the scripted shows in 2009. And it was a 32 percent jump over the number of scripted programs that made their debuts in the equivalent period of 2019.In June, the industry hit a wall. In the second half of the year, premieres of scripted shows dropped 28 percent from the same period in 2019. The effect was most apparent in September, a big month for debuts. In September 2019, 86 shows had their premieres in the United States. A year later, that number fell to 35.“Last year saw a stalling of what seemed like unstoppable growth for scripted content,” said Fred Black, a senior analyst at Ampere.Nearly every platform, broadcast network and cable channel has taken a hit, according to Ampere. Even the prolific Netflix had fewer American scripted shows in the second half of last year. And the industrywide decline continued into January, Mr. Black said.For some people in Hollywood, not to mention many viewers, the pause is not unwelcome.“The more and more and more thing — who was that good for?” said Willa Paskin, a TV critic at Slate and a host of its “Decoder Ring” podcast. “We are ravenous content monsters, but isn’t it nice to have it be chiller and have some time to get to catch up on something?”Naomi Fry, a staff writer at The New Yorker who covers pop culture and television, said: “For the last year, it feels as if we’ve been watching TV on a plane. We’re kind of locked in a vortex, flipping between various options. You’re waiting for time to pass. Some of it is very good, but there’s also a sense of glut and not a sense of excitement and specialness about it.”One reason for the drop is obvious: With productions shut down, new seasons could not be completed in time. But there was another reason, executives and agents said. When filming resumed, extensive safety protocols for actors and crews added roughly 30 percent to most production budgets, said Chris Silbermann, the chief executive of ICM Partners, a major Hollywood talent agency.“Everyone saw these costs pulling through the system and realized, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to have to do less,’” Mr. Silbermann said. “Stuff that was on the bubble, a lot of that stuff just went away.”The slowdown also meant a change in Hollywood negotiations.“I am now having tough production budget conversations with the streamers that I used to have with NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox,” Mr. Silbermann said. “These are like old-school budget conversations.”Several outlets fed the maw in another way, by turning to international programming. Netflix’s “Lupin,” a French thriller series, and “Call My Agent!” a French workplace dramedy, have connected with American audiences. Their success was part of a larger lockdown trend: The viewing of non-English-language titles by U.S. Netflix subscribers shot up more than 50 percent in 2020, a Netflix spokesman said.“Every show in another language is immediately better for us, because you can’t be on your phone,” Ms. Paskin, the Slate critic, said. “It just makes you pay attention.”How About a Nice Game Show?To fill the void left by the lack of scripted fare, nearly all outlets have also turned to reality programs, documentary series and even game shows, all of which are cheaper to make. Broadcast networks have given prime-time hours to shows like “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price Is Right at Night.” The number of unscripted shows making their debuts in 2020 increased 19 percent over the previous year, Ampere said.“Everywhere you look, there’s a game show,” said Mr. Roush, the TV Guide critic. He added that his readers had pestered him about the lack of new episodes of network standbys like “NCIS” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”With movie theaters either closed or selling limited tickets, streaming platforms have also filled in the blanks with new films that would have played on big screens for weeks or months before reaching home viewers. “Wonder Woman 1984” was the first of many WarnerMedia movies to stream on HBO Max the same day as its theatrical premiere date, and the much-anticipated Eddie Murphy sequel, “Coming 2 America,” arrives to Amazon on Friday.Some TV franchises found ways to work around pandemic shutdowns. AMC’s biggest hit, “The Walking Dead,” was scheduled to go into production in April and start rolling out its 11th and final season in October. With 22 series regulars and hundreds of extras and crew members, it is not a simple production. Then the virus struck.“We were sitting around asking ourselves, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Dan McDermott, president of original programming for AMC Networks.They decided on a scaled-down add-on to the 10th season, with six new episodes focused on individual characters that could be shot sans dozens of zombies. Those episodes went into production in October, and the first is scheduled for AMC on Sunday. The 11th season of “The Walking Dead” started filming weeks ago, with the premiere scheduled for later this year, roughly two years after the debut of the previous season.Several other AMC series fell a year behind schedule. Mr. McDermott said he had filled the holes with international acquisitions, including the British crime dramas “Gangs of London” and “The Salisbury Poisonings.”“We’re discovering like, wow, there’s a lot of great content being made out there,” he said. “And it would not necessarily have enjoyed the same profile, if it were a regular year.”There is still plenty to watch. The broadcast networks are offering new episodes of “This Is Us” and “Young Sheldon,” and Disney+ is streaming new episodes of the Marvel series “WandaVision.”But with the spigot slowing as the stay-at-home period continues for millions of people, many viewers are turning to old favorites or trying shows they may have missed the first time around, like the cult NBC comedy series “Freaks and Geeks,” which became available on Hulu in January, or “The Sopranos,” a perennial HBO favorite.“People have a lot more time to watch TV,” Ms. Paskin said. “People who say, ‘Oh, I’m going to watch “The Sopranos,”’ they are looking for a project. Doesn’t that just seem very quarantine mind-set? People are home every night. It’s fun to have a project that’s painless — rewatching ‘The Sopranos.’ Are you kidding!”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the MainstreamWith several films competing for Golden Globes on Sunday and a number of high-priced movies coming this year, the streaming service has altered its reputation in Hollywood.“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” nominated for three Golden Globes, is one of several Amazon films competing on Sunday night. Credit…Amazon StudiosFeb. 26, 2021Updated 3:02 p.m. ETSacha Baron Cohen may have been going a little mad. It was August, the pandemic was raging, and his secret production had shut down. He was determined to reprise his role as Borat in a feature film designed to satirize the Trump administration ahead of the November election.But how?First he persuaded Universal Studios to allow him to shop his incomplete movie. Then he cobbled together an hour of footage. (The infamous scene with Rudolph W. Giuliani had yet to be filmed.) Hulu was interested. So was Netflix. But Amazon Studios was the one most committed to getting the movie out in time, no matter the cost.Amazon spent $80 million to acquire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a decision that incurred extra expenses because of Covid-19 protocols, test screenings in New Zealand — one of the few places in the world at the time where the company could gather a group of people in a dark movie theater — and a last-minute dash to incorporate all the gonzo footage before the film’s release on Oct. 23. (Mr. Cohen was cutting it close, still shooting three weeks before he had to deliver the movie.)“They broke every rule for us,” Mr. Cohen said in a phone interview. “There was a certain delivery schedule that they felt was necessary, and they halved that time. They realized the imperative of getting this out before the election. And they changed their procedures completely to help us do this. I’m really, really grateful.”Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if necessary.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesJennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is also grateful. When the Golden Globes air on Sunday, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” will be competing for three awards: best comedy or musical, best actor and best supporting actress (Maria Bakalova). Other Amazon acquisitions, including Regina King’s directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” and “Sound of Metal,” starring Riz Ahmed, are also contending for prizes.Those accolades, coupled with the cultural impact “Borat” has enjoyed across the globe, have significantly altered the perception of Amazon Studios’ film division in Hollywood and among Amazon’s more than 150 million Prime subscribers. (The studio, which does not disclose viewer numbers, will say only that tens of millions of subscribers watched “Borat.”)Once a home for indie darlings such as “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” Amazon Prime Video is transforming itself into a place for commercial films with broad appeal that can travel internationally. It’s all part of Ms. Salke’s plan to turn Prime into a service people subscribe to for more than free shipping for their paper towels.“We had seen firsthand, when Amazon gets behind a piece of content, just how big the muscle is that they are capable of flexing,” said David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance Media and the producer of Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” series. He recently sold the films “Without Remorse” and “The Tomorrow War” to Amazon. “With ‘Borat,’ they showed they could do that with films, too.”Amazon has thrived in the last year, with profits increasing some 200 percent since the pandemic began. That success has extended to its film business. Like other streaming services, it has been able to snatch up big-budget, star-driven films that studios have been forced to shelve in response to the closing of movie theaters.Netflix, Apple, Disney+ and Hulu have all benefited from the studios’ woes, but Amazon has been one of the most aggressive in acquiring new movies.Michael B. Jordan has an overall content deal with Amazon that will allow him to explore areas like fashion, music and podcasts. Credit…Nadja Klier/Paramount PicturesIn September, Ms. Salke acquired “Without Remorse” — starring Michael B. Jordan and based on a Tom Clancy series — for $105 million. It will debut at the end of April. The next month, it paid $125 million for the rights to “Coming 2 America,” which will premiere next Friday. Eddie Murphy was initially hesitant about taking the sequel to his much-beloved film to Amazon, but Ms. Salke and others say he was reassured by the performance of “Borat.”In January, the company made its biggest bet yet, paying $200 million to acquire the Chris Pratt-led action film “The Tomorrow War,” which Paramount was set to release. It stands as Amazon’s largest financial commitment in acquiring a feature film. The company hopes to debut it on Prime Video this summer.“We don’t have a huge bench of big blockbuster movies in the works,” Ms. Salke said with a laugh. “So for us it was opportunistic to be able to lean into that.”With more players than ever joining the streaming fray (Paramount+, anyone?), the pace of delivering new content is an issue that every service worries about. Netflix threw down the gauntlet in January when it announced its 2021 strategy of delivering one new movie per week, which followed WarnerMedia’s announcement that all of Warner Bros.’s 2021 theatrical films will debut in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service at the same time.With so much volume being offered by those two companies, along with Disney’s recent announcement that at least 80 percent of its 100 new projects will be earmarked for Disney+, the only way to compete is to go big.“It’s going to be really interesting over the next three years,” said Roeg Sutherland, one of the heads of media finance for Creative Artists Agency. “With platforms programming one new movie a week, this is fueling a competitive marketplace for high-end, independently financed films.”At the Sundance Film Festival last month, Apple paid a record $25 million for rights to the independent film “Coda.”Ms. Salke pushes back on the idea that her plans to broaden her offerings are a reaction to her competitors. Rather, she said, it’s the culmination of a strategy that began at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, when as a newcomer to the film world she spent $46 million to acquire four films, including “Late Night” with Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, and the feel-good movie “Brittany Runs a Marathon.”Before joining Amazon, Ms. Salke spent her career in television, shepherding hits like “Modern Family” and “Glee” at 20th Century Fox and “This Is Us” at NBCUniversal. After her Sundance shopping spree, she was mocked by some film insiders as an out-of-touch television executive overspending to acquire niche movies.She was criticized for paying $13 million for “Late Night,” when it grossed $15.4 million at the box office. “Brittany Runs a Marathon” earned just $7 million. That commentary still seems to sting Ms. Salke, though she argues that she released the films theatrically only to appease the filmmakers. The movies’ real metric of success, she said, was how they played on the streaming service.Regina King on the set of “One Night in Miami” with Kingsley Ben-Adir. The actress turned director says she was amazed at how often she saw ads for her film while shopping on Amazon.Credit…Patti Perret/Amazon Studios, via Associated Press“Those movies all kept coming out as No. 1,” said Ms. Salke, referring to the films’ performances on Amazon Prime. “Every time we launched one, the next one would eclipse the next one. We were training our audience to know that we would have big original films that were more commercial on Prime Video. It’s a little bit of an ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy.”But what happens to that plan once the pandemic is over and studios are no longer willing to sell their movies to streaming platforms?Amazon has some 34 films in various stages of production around the world, and Ms. Salke said the company was committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if merited. (Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is stepping down as the company’s chief executive this year, but the studio isn’t expecting any big changes when Andy Jassy takes the reins.)The Culver City, Calif., complex is still being built, and, if anything, investment has increased. Ms. Salke points to Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming film about Lucy and Desi Arnaz, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as a potential hit. There’s also George Clooney’s film “The Tender Bar,” starring Ben Affleck, and an L.G.B.T.Q. romantic drama, “My Policeman,” featuring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin (“The Crown”).“The new news is that you will see us embrace some bigger projects going forward that are self-generated,” she said.In Ms. Salke’s mind, this was always the place where Amazon Film was going to land. And there is a newfound confidence to her outlook as she celebrates her third anniversary as the head of the studio. In addition to her recent acquisition spree, she has made overall content deals with Mr. Jordan and the actor and musician Donald Glover, which she says will reinforce her mission to burnish Amazon’s reputation as a talent-friendly place.With its healthy subscription base, Amazon is attracting those in Hollywood who are interested in the company’s global reach but also curious about the company’s other businesses that have the potential to expand a star’s brand beyond film and television.Mr. Jordan, for one, said his overall content deal would allow him to explore areas other studios couldn’t offer: specifically fashion, music and podcasts. His portrayal of the physical incarnation of Amazon’s Alexa during a Super Bowl ad was an example.And Ms. King got a kick out of just how pervasive Amazon’s marketing of her film was whenever she logged into the company’s e-commerce site.“When I’m on Amazon, buying doggy bags, and my film pops up at the top, that’s pretty amazing,” she said. “That’s like, wow! Every single day I am getting a text from someone who saw the movie that probably wouldn’t have seen it if it didn’t pop up in their shopping queue.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
