Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
News broke last week that Netflix had quietly — and quickly — pulled the plug on the lavish superhero drama Jupiter’s Legacy. The show, which just premiered last month, was the first live action series to emerge from graphic novelist Mark Millar’s $30 million Millarverse deal with Netflix, and it seems it was a resounding flop. It might have spent a few days hovering in Netflix’s Top 10 list, but it didn’t pierce the zeitgeist at all. Search interest for the show was next to non-existent. Worse, the show reportedly cost Netflix a whopping $200 million, which would make it the most expensive season of TV Netflix has produced to date.
So what went wrong? Well, a lot of things. Jupiter’s Legacy switched showrunners in the middle of production, juggled a complicated dual timeline story arc, and focused on superheroes who were far from household names. The series was overly complicated with original showrunner Steven S. DeKnight openly sharing that he hesitated on introducing fan favorite characters from the comics to better serve a five or six season plan. After DeKnight was replaced with Sang Kyu Kim, the show also had to go through last minute reshoots. And, ultimately, folks were turned off by what can only be described as the worst wigs ever.
But all that doesn’t account for the hard reality that if Jupiter’s Legacy really cost Netflix $200 million, it is the most expensive flop in the streamer’s history. Sure Marco Polo also reportedly cost Netflix a $200 million loss, but they got two seasons out of it! At that price tag, Jupiter’s Legacy should have been a major event for Netflix, akin to WandaVision on Disney+ or the heyday of Game of Thrones on HBO. As it happens, Jupiter’s Legacy wasn’t even as popular as Ginny and Georgia or Firefly Lane (both of which have earned a second season). To fully comprehend what a colossal misfire Jupiter’s Legacy was, all you have to do is compare it to some of the biggest shows of 2021 on Google Trends:
Search interest in Jupiter’s Legacy was a flatline, meaning it was dead on arrival.
Could the legacy of Jupiter’s Legacy be that Netflix finally has to reappraise its approach to event series titles? For years, Netflix has been content to prioritize quantity over quality in its series development. It was imperative for the streamer to quickly make a bunch of shows that they had complete ownership over. So Netflix threw money at showrunners and creatives in a race to just create content. In some cases, Netflix stumbled upon mega-hits this way. First-time showrunners The Duffer Brothers crafted Netflix’s first behemoth hit Stranger Things thanks to the faith granted them. I can’t think of another network that would have ordered a drama about a chess prodigy, but The Queen’s Gambit exists, and it was a hit! But for every expensive success like The Crown, Bridgerton, or The Witcher, there are costly flops like Marco Polo, Altered Carbon, The Get Down, and now Jupiter’s Legacy.
In prior years, a loss like Jupiter’s Legacy wouldn’t really ding Netflix’s reputation that much. However in 2021, Netflix has real rivals in the streaming space. Disney+ has quickly asserted its pop culture dominance with mega mainstream hits like WandaVision and The Mandalorian, and there’s a never-ending pipeline of similar marquee MCU and Star Wars shows on the way. Besides a Game of Thrones prequel in the making and a film slate that really lives up to the name “Home Box Office,” HBO Max has also shown repeated success with adult crime dramas. The finale for their latest limited series, Mare of Easttown, crashed the site. Netflix even has strong competition in the “background binge” realm, with Discovery+ showing far grander growth than industry insiders expected when it launched in January.
So does Netflix need to rethink their approach to event TV? The tepid responses to Jupiter’s Legacy (and another recent under-performer, Shadow and Bone) suggest so. Netflix has a ton of major series coming down the pipeline, from the return of hits like The Witcher and Stranger Things to big name new shows like Cowboy Bebop and Sandman. While all these shows will no doubt have viewers, will they still be able to make the same impact as competing event shows on other streamers? I’m actually not convinced! Netflix’s tried and true way of doing things might need to be shaken up. They might even need to take tips from — gulp — their competitors!
Here are just 4 ways Netflix can learn from Jupiter’s Legacy and reclaim its position as the place to stream the biggest shows on TV…
Focus On Making One Good Season of TV
Maybe this sounds insanely obvious, but in my years covering Netflix shows, I have noticed that many showrunners simply assume that their job is to set up the first season of a monster hit and not to make one well-crafted singular season of TV. Steven DeKnight admitted to fans on Twitter that he held back on certain storylines because he wanted a five or six season arc. I Am Not Okay With This‘s Jonathan Entwistle told Decider (and a room full of journalists) on a set visit that he “absolutely” was planning a second season. The show’s cliffhanger ending definitely set up a more intriguing Season 2, but the show was canceled. Indeed, a number of Netflix shows seem distinctly structured to invite a Season 2 renewal. (Think Ginny and Georgia or Firefly Lane‘s recent cliffhangers. At least in those cases, it worked!)
The irony is that by focusing on setting up future stories, these shows often ignore the key components to telling a satisfying story in Season 1. I Am Not Okay With This pushed the reveal of the man in the tower until the final moments and Jupiter’s Legacy obviously wanted to set up a massive storytelling universe first and foremost. And neither show clicked with Netflix viewers the way other shows did.
Some of Netflix’s biggest “surprise” hits have been one and done shows like The Queen’s Gambit or were at least originally envisioned as limited series, like 13 Reasons Why. Even the first season of Stranger Things told a complete story with only a few lingering atmospheric questions left unanswered. Bridgerton so neatly wraps up the Duke and Daphne’s romance in Season 1, star Regé-Jean Page doesn’t need to come back to keep the show’s envisioned anthology-like structure going!
Over on HBO, limited series like Mare of Easttown, Chernobyl, The Outsider, The Undoing, and the original season of Big Little Lies have become juggernauts. People like watching a season of TV with an end point in sight! So maybe Netflix should reiterate to showrunners to prioritize nailing the first season before they plan future seasons and spin-offs?
Of course, there’s something else that HBO (and Disney+) are doing to better serve their event series…
Experiment with Weekly Rollouts
One seemingly small decision that seems to have helped Disney+’s big shows dominate pop culture in a way Netflix shows don’t? Weekly episodic rollout. Instead of dropping every episode of a show like The Mandalorian and WandaVision at once, Disney+ ekes out episodes every Friday. (Or Wednesday in the case of the upcoming Loki.) The weekly rollout means each new episode is appointment viewing. Moreover fans spend a full week in between episodes talking about what happened and what could happen next. Everyone watching the show is watching it together and therefore focused on the same conversations. HBO has also benefited from weekly rollouts as popular shows gain strength as season’s go on.
Weekly rollouts simply keep a show in the conversation longer than the binge model does. Netflix might be helping people watch a show faster, but they’re also helping viewers forget shows faster, too. It’s therefore a rare hit that manages to stay in the conversation for longer than a week. If Netflix wants to make the most of their investments in big “event” shows, they might want to do the unthinkable and experiment with weekly episodic rollouts.
It’s not even that Netflix has never experimented with weekly episodic rollouts before. They tried it with a Canadian drama called Between, reality shows like The Circle and Too Hot to Handle, and foreign shows like The Great British Baking Show. However they’ve never applied this programming strategy to their big scripted shows. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to try it on Stranger Things 4, but Shadow and Bone could have been ripe for a weekly rollout. Future potential hits like Sandman, Cowboy Bebop, and Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass could also be shows worth the experiment. (Flanagan even makes shows that lean into jaw-dropping moments tailor made for a moment in the watercooler talk sun.)
If nothing else, Netflix could learn a lot from the data of trying weekly rollouts vs. their current binge model. (And we all know Netflix loves data…)
Actually Promote Your Big Shows Like They’re Big Shows?
Uh…did Netflix really do the best job promoting a $200 million show or did they just give up on Jupiter’s Legacy in advance? I ask because I am a professional TV critic and I barely remember hearing about the show. I recall the trailer coming out, but didn’t see a single billboard on my walk through New York City. There were no sponsored Twitter ads. No aggressive late night show appearances for the Jupiter’s Legacy cast. It was just an online trailer and maybe a couple emails from a PR rep and that’s it.
Again, in the old days, Netflix didn’t have to put a lot of money into promoting every single show that debuted on the service. They could trust that people would learn about any new series as soon as they logged onto Netflix and saw the new shows at the top of the page. However…Netflix has competition now. And the competition is promoting the bejesus out of their shows.
Every day I’ve walked down my local block in the last two months, I’ve seen posters for Hulu’s current season of The Handmaid’s Tale and HBO’s most recent offerings, The Nevers and Mare of Easttown. When I go on Twitter, I see numerous sponsored ads for Disney+’s Loki, which isn’t out until June 9. I know that Loki is coming out June 9 because there has even been a whole ad campaign centered around Tom Hiddleston announcing the date. He also is harping on the fact that Loki is coming out on Wednesdays, which he tells me are the “new” Fridays.
I’ve seen commercials for Disney+ and Hulu and HBO Max and even Peacock and Paramount+ shows while watching cable TV. I am inundated with Discovery+ ads when I watch any Discovery linear network. I catch the stars of Netflix’s rival streaming shows on late night and morning talk shows. Bridgerton‘s stars? They didn’t pop up on Fallon until well after the show was a hit.
All I’m saying is maybe Netflix might want to rethink their strategy for how they reach everyday consumers. Sure, I knew there were a few virtual Shadow and Bone panels ahead of the show’s launch, but I was already a fan of the books. I had to literally tell my mother, an avid TV watcher and fantasy nerd the show existed. I doubt she even watched Jupiter’s Legacy, but guess what? She has opinions about HBO Max’s Hacks!
Maybe — just maybe — Netflix can change that with some smart advertising.
Get Good Wigs
The number one thing Netflix can do to avoid another Jupiter’s Legacy-esque disaster? Invest in good wigs.
I can hear you saying to me now, “But Meghan, there’s no such thing as a good wig!” And reader, there is. Look no further than another Netflix hit, The Queen’s Gambit. Anya Taylor-Joy did not dye her hair red. Those were wigs. And you know what? The Queen’s Gambit was a huge hit!
Jupiter’s Legacy had some truly terrible wigs. They were so bad, they were joked about by both critics and fans alike. Bad wigs take viewers out of the reality of what they are watching. Good ones help them suspend their disbelief.
If you want your show to not be a flop, Netflix, make sure your hair department’s got the good wigs.
Invest in wigs. Invest in the future. Invest in yourself, Netflix.
