Ever since they reported their first net subscriber loss last spring, Netflix has been faltering. They announced a plan to end password sharing, and introduced an ad-supported tier despite a longtime stance that ads weren’t their style. Then they raised prices across all their tiers, while prioritizing a content strategy of mediocre reality shows and paint-by-numbers action movies. Besides a couple of successes like Wednesday or Stranger Things, nothing they do tends to stick in the zeitgeist for very long anymore. Rather than improving the quality of the shows or movies they’re making, Netflix is instead expanding into brick and mortar locations. These spaces will be a combination of retail, dining, and live entertainment. I wonder whose idea this was and how much…chemical enhancement was behind it. It’s giving “Kendall Roy has a doomed light-bulb moment during a coke bender” to me.
According to a Bloomberg report quoting Josh Simon, the company’s vice president of consumer products, Netflix aims to open a network of stores offering retail, dining and live entertainment that leverage its TV shows and movies.
Netflix has not announced what it will be selling at the locations; it’s unclear if DVDs or any type of physical media will be part of the inventory.
The streamer plans to open the first two of these “Netflix House” locations in unannounced cities in the U.S. in 2025. It hopes to expand the concept to major cities around the world thereafter.
“We’ve seen how much fans love to immerse themselves in the world of our movies and TV shows,” Simon told Bloomberg. “And we’ve been thinking a lot about how we take that to the next level.”
A Queen’s Ball: The Bridgerton Experience was an in-person event put on by Netflix that was successful. But that’s also one of their most popular shows. I had friends go to it and they all said it was super fun. In general, I remain unconvinced that there are enough series/movies with deep enough fan bases to give these locations the traffic they’ll need, besides probably Stranger Things. In the NPR article they also point out that Netflix is clearly trying to imitate Disney’s strategy (like with Disneyland). But the difference is that Disney has an extremely unified theme across all touch points, from movies to merch to theme parks: nostalgia. They’ve faltered in recent years–the $1200-a-night, immersive Star Wars hotel is closing–but they still have the most stacked IP, the deepest bench, in the entire world. They can merchandise to hell and back, and create blockbuster theme parks, because multiple generations have grown up with their characters. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in 1937. Disney’s entire brand is centered around reliving your own memories of childhood, and then recreating those memories with your own children. Netflix has not been around long enough to build that kind of legacy. There isn’t a single Netflix title with as deep of a cultural impact as Snow White, or Toy Story, or even Frozen. And because Netflix has a habit of canceling shows after two seasons, people don’t get to develop the parasocial relationships that make long-running network shows like The Office or Friends so beloved. Netflix should fix their content strategy before chasing after experimental retail concepts.
photos from Netflix offices courtesy Netflix
