‘The Ridiculous 6′ Is The Most-Watched Movie In Netflix History (And Other Key Takeaways From Reed Hastings’ CES Keynote Speech)

Netflix announced its availability in 130 new countries. The map above, courtesy of Netflix’s Help Center, shows countries where Netflix is available in red and where Netflix in not available in gray. That big blob on the right side, as irony would have it, is Red China. We don’t call it that anymore and it’s far more amenable to foreign investment than it was in the Cold War era, but China is still a thorny place to do business when it comes to government censorship and legal protection for intellectual property. Netflix said it “continues to explore options for providing the service” in China, which is the world’s second largest consumer market after the United States.

Aside from China, Netflix essentially covers the globe — the few omissions are war-torn countries like North Korea and Syria. That announcement today puts Netflix on par with Apple’s music division in terms of media powerhouses with a global research, and Netflix’s ability to move a single piece of content to global markets is virtually unparalleled among distributors of film and TV content.

Although the trailer — or “sizzle,” as Netflix calls it — for The Crown is heavy on the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Netflix announced the show last year as “the gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain’s post-war destiny.” That sounds like a two-hander, and John Lithgow will be the other — a jowly, growly, commanding Winston Churchill who looks and sounds the part in the few snippets that feature him. We’ve seen funny Lithgow, creepy Lithgow, song-and-dance Lithgow, and this is going to be Emmy-bait-y gravitas Lithgow.

The Crown, which is not set for release but will premiere sometime in 2016, looks like a traditional, PBS-style prestige drama with no expenses spared — Downtown Abbey with bigger set pieces, The King’s Speech with a more sprawling story — and the almost-certain emphasis on World War II will be on-brand with Netflix’s global focus.

Two of the more anticipated new series of the year are HBO’s Vinyl, a 1970s drama about a New York rock’n’roll record label, and Netflix’s The Get Down, a 1970s drama about life on the New York streets with a heavy dose of R&B, hip-hop and disco. The contrast between the Get Down trailer released today and the latest Vinyl trailer could not be starker or more representative of HBO and Netflix’s respective sensibilities.

Vinyl, which premieres Feb. 14 and is produced by Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire), Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Casino) and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, looks more like the East Coast, first-world-problems HBO — the dominant HBO brand — of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Newsroom than the network of the more socially aware and auteurist Girls, Treme and The Wire. Netflix’s The Get Down from Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby) is a more frenetic, multicultural and unexpected approach to 1970s New York.

That’s not to say that every HBO series is institutional or that every Netflix series comes from a progressive, global viewpoint — Netflix’s The Crown looks plenty institutional — but The Get Down looks more like where the beat is going than the Vinyl of where it’s been.

The Starz premium cable network has a deal for Disney films released through the end of 2015, and Netflix has a similar deal for Disney films released beginning in 2016. As the New York Post reported earlier this week, that means Netflix will have future Star Wars films, but Starz will get Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos during the Q&A following the keynote that Netflix is working on getting rights to the film.

This on the same day that The Force Awakens officially became the highest-grossing film in domestic box office history. The release on later platforms — Blu-ray, streaming, premium cable, etc. — will be big, noisy media events, and Netflix will want in on that. Netflix releases very little viewership data so who knows what its customers are really watching, but airing big studio movies long after the theatrical window isn’t Netflix’s thing anymore. As much as the emphasis at CES was on Netflix’s global presence, the company’s brand today is buzz-worthy, must-watch, original programming.

When Netflix struck a four-picture deal last year with Adam Sandler, there was much groaning about Sandler’s horrendous record of critical success — a career 36 out of 100 on Metacritic — and the relatively crappier movies he was likelier to make for a distributor with a reputation for giving filmmakers plenty of creative room. And — no surprise here — Sandler’s first film under Netflix deal, The Ridiculous 6, was one of the worst-reviewed movies of his career.

The surprise is that The Ridiculous 6 was a giant hit for Netflix, which said during the Q&A that the film had more views during its first 30 days in release than any other film — original or licensed from another studio — in Netflix’s history. The Verge’s Jamieson Cox attributed the strong performance to Adam Sandler’s broad appeal, Netflix’s impressive marketing machine, and Netflix’s rapidly expanding customer base. Check, check and check.

But could the next one be a little better?

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Signature and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.