Hulu Is Proving Slow & Steady Wins The Race

Hulu is having more than a moment; at a little over ten years old, the platform has steadily become a major player, and last year, when The Handmaid’s Tale took home the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, Hulu made history as the first streaming service to earn the award. Since then, the platform has only continued to bring their A-game, and their spring slate of originals may be their strongest yet. With each new series created or acquired, Hulu is demonstrating that being slow and steady wins the race – even if the end game isn’t quite in sight yet.

While competitors like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video race to put out as much content as possible, Hulu has been playing the long game, strategically curating a slate of must-see titles bound to reel in new subscribers and ensure that they hold onto their existing ones. In 2018 alone, as part of their goal to host 50% original programming in their library, Netflix is aiming to debut some 700 original series and movies. This evidently may be bad news for some of your favorite non-platform original series currently on the platform, and as many of them have left Netflix, Hulu has quickly scooped them up. The majority of Fox’s shows have now jumped over to Hulu, and the platform also nabbed Lost earlier this year when it became homeless – and that’s just in addition to their recent massive TGIF lineup that boasts classics like Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, and more. Whether Hulu’s slate of shows both old and new is superior to that of its competitor is an entirely different conversation, but there is something to be said for its strategy.

This spring, Hulu is debuting three strong dramas – 9/11 thriller The Looming Tower, BBC co-production Hard Sun, and Season 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale. Whether or not all of them wind up experiencing the same success of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 1 is irrelevant; what’s important here is the focus that’s clearly at play. By putting out three solid shows led by buzzy actors – Jeff Daniels (in addition to a star-studded ensemble cast), Jim Sturgess, and Elisabeth Moss – they are ensuring that they remain simultaneously accessible and part of the conversation. It’s impossible to truly keep pace with a platform like Netflix, especially given the fact that Hulu is currently not available internationally, so they’re doing the next-best thing – staying at the front of the zeitgeist. Not every show may wind up being a hit, but you’re more likely to remember a handful of titles than you are a hundred.

By prioritizing quality over quantity, Hulu is consistently demonstrating that they’re here to be taken seriously. They have no interest in being a passing fad or overloading viewers with the most content they can get their hands on; instead, there’s a careful calculation to their decisions, a measured interest in how they create their image. Consider their most-discussed originals thus far; in addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, we’ve had Casual, The Path, Future Man, The Mindy Project, Harlots, Marvel’s Runaways, Difficult People, and 11.22.63, among others. These series are demonstrative of Hulu’s ability to reel in talent and diversify their repertoire with offbeat comedy, smart drama, and well-known names and empires (i.e. Stephen King and Marvel). Not everything gets off the ground and stays there, but they certainly aren’t spending hundreds of millions of dollars and dumping shows after one season like their competitors. It appears that rather than going for the buzziest, of-the-moment choice, Hulu tends to lean towards interesting titles helmed by strong-voiced creators that will find an audience down the line.

The reliability of Hulu’s behavior may not make headlines or rake in substantial cash on the daily, but there’s evidently going to be some reward down the line, and The Handmaid’s Tale‘s early success is proof of that. Between their smart valuation of older, beloved series and their push to create more innovative content, they may very well be able to give their competitors a run for their money somewhere down the line. As they continue to win over critics and awards shows and lure big name talent as a result (the upcoming Castle Rock, based on the stories of Stephen King, a Catch-22 miniseries starring and directed by George Clooney, and The First, a drama from House of Cards creator Beau Willimon, all speak to this), Hulu will continue to remain a frontrunner in the streaming conversation – and they don’t even need to race to get there.