Good things must always come to an end. That is true for the nostalgia of simpler times when DVDs were a thing and we would have to wait in anticipation to own them, but also for the show that turned Netflix into the phenomenon it became and that essentially put DVDs out of business.
The irony of today’s round-up of news containing both updates on Stranger Things season five and the news of the farewell to Netflix’s DVD mailing service is not lost on us. The former was one of the platform’s first hits in the streaming era, initiating a revolution that had been a long time brewing. While it certainly has its perks, and we’ve enjoyed the hassle-free and relatively cheap access to all our favorite films and shows, the latest Writers and Actors strikes have put into perspective just how important the DVD business was when it came to profiting off of your work years after it was released. With streaming, the residuals are minimal.
The business side of things is also an important contextualization for why Warner Bros. might have thought it a good idea to sell the rights to some of its stronger offers to the competition. After Issa Rae’s Insecure migrated to Netflix, the Dwayne Johnson hit HBO original show Ballers from 2015 is now also doing big numbers on the competing platform. And it doesn’t end there.
Spoilers are as deadly as Vecna in the Upside Down world of streaming television, so for Stranger Things‘ David Harbour to almost accidentally reveal a major plot point of the show’s upcoming fifth and final season is a big deal. Emphasis on “almost.”
In an interview with Josh Horowitz, the 48-year-old actor, whose career received a significant boost after landing the role of Jim Hopper in the phenomenal Netflix show, revealed that the new season starts “somewhere after” the events of season four. That much seems obvious, but it was his delivery as well as what he said afterward that inspired some suspicion among fans that he could possibly be about to spill the beans on a time jump.
“You’ve got to imagine the world is a different place,” Harbour said of the new season. We last left off with the heroes of Hawkins looking over the town as it was consumed by Vecna and the Upside Down. Could that be what he meant? Or are we actually jumping all the way into a new decade?
It’s officially the end of an era as Netflix ships its last-ever DVDs
Before there was Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, and Wednesday, Netflix was a successful DVD-by-mail service. It’s quite symbolic, then, that this branch of the company is closing down for good in the midst of the current climate felt around Hollywood, where creatives mourn the old ways of the industry, with theaters and DVDs at its center.
As the main propulsor of streaming and the consequential death of the DVD format, Netflix also largely defined the contours of the current standard business format for film and TV. A strategy that prioritizes mass content production, and forgets to look out for the little guy when it comes to the future of that same content and what its many lives in the form of re-watches should mean for the people who made it.
Netflix kept its DVD mailing system alive for 25 years but has announced that it will ship out its very last set of discs to its subscribers by September 29th. In a statement that customers received in their virtual mailboxes, the company announced a celebratory campaign to mark this termination, where those who choose to order a DVD by August 29th could win an extra 10 discs in the mail based on their queue.
An HBO original finds new life as Warner Bros. hands Netflix the keys to the palace
Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav’s relationship with streaming is an odd one. The businessman, who took over the company following a merger in April 2022, does not believe in direct-to-streaming movie releases and also has no problem getting rid of underperforming titles that cost more to keep in the platform than to get rid of (they just hate paying those residuals, don’t they?).
Zaslav’s latest move, however, seems to be a diplomatic collaboration with rival streaming platforms, as he’s been calling for Max, Netflix, Prime, and the lot to bundle together and be marketed as one product. Maybe his decision to license considerably beloved HBO original shows to Netflix is part of that same long-term plan. It started with Insecure, and now Ballers has found its new home in the TUDUM streamer, and the deal is already showing results.
The Dwayne Johnson-led sports dramedy show, which ran on HBO from 2015 to 2019, was among the top 10 most-watched series on Netflix this week in 39 countries. What’s more, it shot all the way to number one in 12 of them. All audiences needed was a reminder that the show existed to pick it back up and give it a new life. Was that Zaslav’s big idea all along, or was he just genuinely trying to get rid of things people were no longer actively watching and shift the burden to the next guy? According to Deadline, the CEO is willing to “forego exclusivity and license content to boost the bottom line.” Netflix has well over double the global subscribers of Max.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
