Hacker Cinema
Red Notice
2021 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
An Interpol-issued Red Notice is a global alert to hunt and capture the world's most wanted. But when a daring heist brings together the FBI's top profiler and two rival criminals, there's no telling what will happen.
8 negative9 neutralfrom 17 commenters
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20 comments on Hacker News
Are they really blaming anyone? This is a good thing, but it's destined to remain pretty niche. The vast majority of people do what's easiest and what everyone else is doing. They like streaming and watch whatever is put on their home screen. Tons of people watched Electric State, Red Notice, The Tomorrow War. Citadel got a season 2.
> The Swedish video game and media company Embracer Group has purchased the rights to “Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit” and other properties from the Saul Zaentz Co. The terms of the details were not disclosed, but CNBC reports that “the purchase was a part of six acquisitions,” totaling $572.8 million. [1]
> Details picked up by the Daily Mail show that Netflix is paying £370 million (about $502 million) for the rights to Dahl's entire catalog. [2]
> At a budget of $200 million, Red Notice is Netflix's most expensive original film to date. [3]
Netflix chose poorly.
[1] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/who-owns-the-lord-of-the-rings-rights
[2] https://www.polygon.com/22876640/netflix-roald-dahl-movies-antisemitism-charity
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Notice_(film)
The book Red Notice by Bill Browder discusses this period. I wish the Netflix movie of the same name was based on it instead!
Maybe overworked and tired population needs spandex instead of Tarkovsky’s movies. After 1,5 hours commuting and 9,5 hours in the office I prefer Netflix’ Red Notice over Stalker. And I guess I am not the only one.
On the other hand as non native Polish speaker I will enjoy some evening with some great movie recommended in this thread.
When I first heard there was going to be a movie "Red Notice" on Netflix, I was hoping it was going to be based on Bill Browder's book. Sadly it was not!
Ozark, Stranger Things, Grace and Frankie are all wrapping up. Archive 51 was great and very well received and cancelled immediately.
Right now there's kind of a shortage of Netflix-unique good shows. I'm not spending money that I worked for in exchange for... a nature documentary narrated by Obama.
Derry Girls is great but you can watch it months in advance on All4 with a dirt cheap VPN. There is a similar situation for Bodyguard.
They are expecting people to actually sign up (instead of sharing passwords lmao) and watch ads for the off chance that in a year or two maybe Squid Game season 2 is as good as season 1, or that they need to not miss out on Red Notice 2 and 3. It feels like they are literally betting that people need forgettable Gal Gadot movies in the same way that they need cigarettes.
I mean, it's a 6 min clip; and the red subaru definitely exists (they went on sale after production ended if I recall, a bit out of my price range:)... although why they took a canonical AWD rally car and made it RWD is beyond my understanding.
There are what - hundred or more individual shots linked in there? So we'd have to narrow on which one is CGI augmented and how much. But it's a lot more "Weighty" of a setup either way than most car chase scenes these days, and received praise at the time accordingly :). I just watched Red Notice last night, and beyond all the other horribleness, the car chase scenes had the classic shiny, unbelievable Star Trek Warp Space feel to them that's common in so many movies today - and with 5-6 times the budget of Baby Driver, it's not that it's a "cheap movie with cheap effects".
edit after a brief Google: Indeed Edgar Wright takes tremendous pride on the car stunts and practical effects in the movie:
https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-car-stunts-edgar-wright-george-miller-ansel-elgort
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/
In fact, the Baby Driver stunt drivers are complaining wildly about CGI in other movies:
https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns-cgi-in-car-movies
So I feel if anything, that movie proves my point :-)
> Netflix is on the very fast downward slope
I don't think the data is proving this out at all. Streaming will probably be a winner-take-most market and Netflix is on track to remain the leader.
We'll see what total 2021 subscriber growth was on Thursday, but estimates for Q4 are still around a net addition of 8 million subscribers. Compare this with Disney Plus growth in the same period of 2 million subscribers and I think the results are quite favorable.
If you pay attention to the details, such as in earnings calls, executives have reported that average subscriber watch time has only been increasing over the past few quarters. (Also see refs such as: https://backlinko.com/netflix-users#time-spent-with-netflix)
Keeping in mind that Covid has slowed production of content, in 2021 Netflix still managed to create the two most watched movies _ever_ on the platform (Red Notice, Don't Look Up). There are follow-up seasons launching for at least three of their strongest series, including Witcher (released tail end of 2021), Bridgerton, and Stranger Things. Plus the regular spikes of culturally relevant content such as Squid Games, Cheer, etc. which now happen fairly often.
> is destroying the business model that made them so appealing in the first place
I'm not sure how you are inferring that the business model has been destroyed here. It's certainly evolving over time but the promise has always been 'pay us a monthly subscription and we'll give you lots of things to watch'. I don't see how that has changed meaningfully or negatively.
Netflix has had naysayers at every stage of its growth. The landscape is always changing but I believe the critical idea is that Netflix leads in streaming and this has only strengthened over time. Total subscribers, revenue per user, and watch hours per account are all drifting up, and I fail to see how that represents a downward slope.
> With big heavyweights like Disney that own a huge percentage of content having their own services, netflix is really going to struggle being anything more than niche media providers (anime) and their own inhouse media.
The thing is, they now pump out their own content quickly enough that they don't need anyone else's anymore, and as I understand it, that was always their goal. I imagine most of the TV-watching population (myself included) is okay with mediocre shows/movies, and Netflix has enough content that you're unlikely to completely run out of stuff to watch on their platform.
What Netflix is currently lacking is big blockbuster movies with well-known actors, but even that is changing. (See: Red Notice, Army of the Dead, Bird Box, etc.)
Entertainment would be low culture then (?). A lot of modern media (marvel, netflix, most of youtube, anything trending basically) is made to be consumed once and forgotten. They're templated products made to generate the maximum amount of revenues from the least amount of work. Yet this is what people think about when you talk about culture these days (and definitely what they "consume" the most), culture has been made global and is all about marketing (go watch the top 1 movie on netflix right now, red notice, it's objectively bad on almost all aspects yet it cumulated 150 million hours of streaming)
Modern "culture" is almost entirely based on entertainment and pass time. How many times have I recommended a book and a movie to be told it's "too hard", "too serious", "not entertaining"... There is a reason why Marvel movies are always in the top of the charts, unplug your brain, grab you favorite sugary snacks and teleport yourself 3 hours in the future.
We call it "content" for a reason, shapeless and tasteless content to fill up the mere containers we became.
> A lot of them just feel like "Oh, you just gave some money to people, removed the usual checks and balances that exist in filming, and told them to deliver a movie ASAP."
Describes Red Notice by Netflix
>Arguably, the current state of movies is a direct result of studios realizing that well-produced, middle of the road content is the most profitable.
yes, if streaming movies well-produced, middle of the road, not terribly expensive is most profitable - as per this recent discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29247571 on red notice
if cinema, big expansive events most profitable (currently)
if shows, high quality addictive, dramatic, character driven, etc. is most profitable
why is quality series more profitable than middle of road? because you have to get people to make the investment of spending 10+ hours.
why are medium quality competence streaming movies most profitable? because many people are willing to spend 90 minutes passing the time with something mildly enjoyable, despite the many draws on our time it's still not seen as a serious investment.
why are big events blah blah blah - because it costs a lot to go out it is a hassle compared to staying home, I tend to go to restaurant as well when I do it so for me at least it definitely has to have been a night worth it at the end, and something big is more likely to make everyone like whoa I had an experience I can't have at home.
But that is the whole point of a 'hollywood type' movie. It's pure escapism for 90+ minutes, even if you can guess early on how it's going to play out.
For people who don't like these type of movies, there are plenty of other 'films' (not movies) out there, that cater for the times when something popcorny isn't what you want.
With Red Notice, it's clear from the stills/trailer that it's a simple actioner, you are going to know if that's your thing even before you press play.
Most of your incredulity seems to be rooted in Red Notice (probably) not being a good movie. But I really don't think that factors into Netflix viewership as much as you'd like. Netflix is treated more as "friday night tv", than "going to the cinema" and people are much more willing to sit through crap on Netflix than you seem willing to accept
>Yeah, but that was on HBO max. That had, at the time, less than 1/5 the users of netflix. Wonder Woman was clearly a marquee title designed to get signups, but that strategy is always risky and not super effective as a one-off - registration funnels are very hard. So, it's not as much a 1:1 comparison as you thought it was.
>14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.
WW84 was the biggest HBO Max exclusive to date. People did signup to watch that movie and therefore their subscribers were a self selected group who are not a representative sample that we can just multiple by 5. Also we already factored in the theatrical release which provided the opportunity for non-HBO subscribers to see it. And to be clear, I wasn't directly comparing WW84 viewer numbers to Red Notice. I was comparing WW to WW84 numbers so the difference in size between Netflix and HBO Max is less of a factor.
>Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.
But it was also a sequel to a beloved movie and an iconic character. Plus the original had a lot of word of mouth success that caused people to predict that WW84 would open bigger. It was one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
Also you are just flat wrong when you say Red Notice received better critical reviews. Both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes have WW84 with mediocre scores and Red Notice with awful scores.
>The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.
So it sounds like we agree that Netflix is probably bending the truth with these numbers in the same mold of how Facebook was lying about the number of people who watched their videos.[1]
[1] - https://fortune.com/2019/10/07/facebook-lawsuit-settlement-inflated-video-data-advertisers/
> both in theaters and streaming
Yeah, but that was on HBO max. That had, at the time, less than 1/5 the users of netflix. Wonder Woman was clearly a marquee title designed to get signups, but that strategy is always risky and not super effective as a one-off - registration funnels are very hard. So, it's not as much a 1:1 comparison as you thought it was.
14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.
Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.
The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.
Ok, for a more apples to apples comparison, let's look at the Wonder Women movies.
The first one opens to $103m[1] which equates to 11.5m viewers. The new one was released simultaneously both in theaters and streaming. It had an opening of $17m or 1.8m viewers plus 38m hours streaming and roughly 14.9m viewings. Let's subtract the sequel's theatrical run from both totals and we have 9.7m theatrical vs 14.9m streaming which equates to a theatrical performance being 65% of the streaming performance (assuming they should both have similar openings which is another arbitrary assumption done to simplify everything and because there are multiple factors pushing in opposite directions).
Let's dock the previous Red Notice numbers of that 35% inflation and that gives us 50m streams. That would knock it out of the number 2 spot, but it would likely still be top 10. Once again, this is an original movie and no non-franchise movie is in the top 50 biggest openings. I still don't buy these numbers.
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl578455041/
[2] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt7126948/
[3] - https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-max-nielsen-top-10-1234895616/
>Red Notice is #1 with 149 million hours viewed
This number is so large that it makes me question the accuracy. The movie is 115 minutes so this is 77.6m views if we assume that everyone who streamed it watched the entire thing and only watched it once. It looks like the most recent numbers say Netflix has 209 million subscribers. That would mean 37% of the global Netflix subscriber base watched this movie in the first few days after release. That is literally unbelievable.
It isn't directly comparably to theatrical box office numbers, but the total viewers would likely translate to at least the 2nd biggest opening ever for a theatrical release. That would be a ridiculous accomplishment for an original movie. There is not a single non-franchise movie in the list of top 50 biggest openings ever[1].
And before anyone responds, yes I understand that the assumptions I made would impact these conclusions, but the assumptions are working in opposite directions, at least partially cancel each other out, and are mostly just used to show approximate magnitude.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_openings_for_films
Keep in mind that nearly half of that went to the three main cast members alone ($50M + $20M + $20M respectively)[0]. The Rock got more because he is both a star and producer of the movie.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2021/10/21/red-notice-is-netflixs-biggest-ever-investment-in-a-film-heres-how-its-other-blockbusters-stack-up/?sh=5b5cc2e5c427
Interesting to see the numbers. For example, Red Notice is #1 with 149 million hours viewed, and when you look at the Wikipedia entry for that film, it says:
> Due to the film's $200 million production budget and Netflix's global film chief Scott Stuber saying that the company's "big-budget tentpole films [need] to draw an audience of more than 70 million viewers within the first 28 days of availability," The New York Observer estimated Red Notice would need to total around 200 million hours (about 83 million household viewers) to be deemed a success
I guess by this definition, it can be deemed a success.