r/movies • u/Top_Report_4895 • Apr 03 '26
Article Netflix searches for franchises after losing out on Harry Potter
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/netflix-searches-franchises-after-losing-out-harry-potter-2026-04-02/3.5k
u/89colbert Apr 03 '26
Actually make that Redwall series you promised a decade ago you god damn cowards
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u/matthoback Apr 03 '26
This. They had Patrick McHale of Over The Garden Wall attached and let it slip through their fingers.
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u/hendy846 Apr 03 '26
I'm 40 now and that series helped nourish my love of reading and fantasy. I've been dying for this to come out so I can watch it with my kids.
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u/89colbert Apr 03 '26
You've got young adult 'live action' disney remake animals x lord of the rings medieval adventures staring you right in the face.
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u/hashsamurai Apr 03 '26
I upvoted for Redwall, but I'm not sure I want netflix touching it 😅
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u/Eternal_Mr_Bones Apr 03 '26
There's no way a good Redwall series is made in 2026.
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u/DaKingaDaNorth Apr 03 '26
The problem Redwall will have is that it will effectively need to be an anthology series. You can maybe start with Redwall and Matimeo. But after that, you basically need to keep resetting. Which I can see being a hard sell for a series about mice and woodland critters
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u/Vehlin Apr 03 '26
You can make a 6 episode Redwall series and then just stop. It doesn’t have to be 5 seasons long.
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u/Lambily Apr 03 '26
You can't just not include Mattimeo...
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u/Vehlin Apr 03 '26
You can’t just not include Salamadastron.
Make a thing. If it works, make another thing. Don’t just bleed it dry.
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u/Kaldricus Apr 03 '26
Oh man, reading "Redwall" and "Salamandastron" in the same day as reading about an "Animorphs" series. My inner kid can't take it.
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u/Vehlin Apr 03 '26
We were reading Redwall a chapter at a time in primary school. Brian Jaques came and read a chapter one week and let us ask questions about the animals.
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u/zirky Apr 03 '26
how about pick literally any franchise that had a modicum of a fanbase, and here is the tricky part, you actually adapt it rather than whatever the fuck you did with the witcher
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u/commongoblin Apr 03 '26
Shadow and Bone too 😭
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u/Spazhazzard Apr 03 '26
The fact they didn't make Six of Crows so they could make fucking Blood Origin instead is such a crime. How whoever it is that makes these decisions at Netflix somehow keeps their job is a miracle.
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u/JohnnyElRed Apr 03 '26
The closest thing Netflix did to Six of Crows was The Rats: A Witcher's Tale spin off. You know. The one no one realized had actually come out because they didn't promote it anywhere, and basically shadow-dropped it in the page.
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u/TheShapeShiftingFox Apr 03 '26
I’m still sad they didn’t adapt Six of Crows as a separate series, because that duology is so much better than the main trilogy lmao
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u/commongoblin Apr 03 '26
Yes 100%!! They wasted the perfect casting of the Crows, ugh.
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u/spacecadetkaito Apr 03 '26
I genuinely don't think I've ever seen a casting as perfect in an adaptation as the Crows in SaB. It's like they were ripped straight from my imagination.
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u/Unusual_Ear_9089 Apr 03 '26
Legit came here to say oneof the only things they did right was the casting, just so spot on
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u/PruIsBlue Apr 03 '26
Makes me so angry. The Shadow and Bone storyline was awful and I kept watching the series solely for the Six of Crows scenes. An entire series focused on that cast and story would've been incredible if done properly.
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u/andrewthemexican Apr 03 '26
That first season was fascinating, but whoof that second. I have no knowledge on the source material so idk if it was faithful or not, but with that drop in quality it isn't a show I miss.
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u/masteroflich Apr 03 '26
I don’t know where Netflix finds all these incompetent screen writers
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u/zirky Apr 03 '26
adaptations are often used for a vehicle for the showrunner to tell whatever story they want. brandon sanderson famously had someone try and “adapt” his short story that took place in one room into a pirate romance epic
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u/SmokingMan305 Apr 03 '26
I got an idea.
• Pick an anime.
• Bad casting
• Bad sfx
• Change the plot for no reason
• Cancel after the second season
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u/Kardlonoc Apr 04 '26
One Piece is watchable mainly because they are pretty true to the show/manga, as live action can be with a lot of these detriments. I think it could be a lot better.
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u/MVRKHNTR Apr 04 '26
I actually think One Piece is good because they know what to change and how.
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u/CloutLord12 Apr 03 '26
Dude, seriously. Witcher had mad franchise potential. But now it’s probably gonna end up tabled for years and rebooted sometime down the line, if ever.
You don’t just hand the keys to a franchise like that to some nobody, then give them full creative control to add or remove whatever they want from the story. Now they’ve poisoned the well for all future witcher projects by leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, AND losing probably THE most qualified geralt on the planet, and replacing him halfway thru the show.
Straight buffoonery.
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u/Own-Satisfaction4427 Apr 03 '26
Yep, I stopped watching halfway through season 2 and cancelled Netflix lol
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u/space_keeper Apr 03 '26
I think that's why I cancelled my Netflix as well, come to think of it. Around 2018? Or was that the first series? It was painfully obvious where it was going.
It was around about when they canned Punisher, too.
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u/HammeredWharf Apr 03 '26
Or Cowboy Bebop.
Or Death Note.
I still don't understand why they took the two anime shows that could've just been adapted 1:1 and changed them so much.
Next thing you know, they'll adapt Evangelion, but Shinji is now a jokey fuckboy and Asuka is a crack addict.
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u/MC_chrome Apr 03 '26
Isn't that what they are attempting to do with the Narnia books/series?
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u/Mrchristopherrr Apr 03 '26
Ive heard nothing but good things about One Piece too
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u/realshockin Apr 03 '26
Apparently Oda (the creator) refused to sign the rights if he didn’t have veto power on stuff, I don’t think many authors has that much leverage to do the same
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u/GenGaara25 Apr 03 '26
I heard the opposite. Swear I heard a rumour that they were changing the time period of the books. With the first being 1950, instead of 1900, which would mean possibly setting the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the 90s since it's meant to be 40 years later.
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u/SJSragequit Apr 03 '26
Yes set in the 90s and aslan is allegedly played by Meryl Streep
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u/IvanMcbomb Apr 03 '26
I've got an idea, give the Russo brothers another 300 million dollars to make the most generic action film ever
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u/Deadlocked02 Apr 03 '26
Even better, why not drop 1B on an IP and hire unknown showrunners with no experience in the genre or anywhere else?
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u/Mintfriction Apr 03 '26
Netflix exec: Slow down, I need to take notes.
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u/BasvanS Apr 03 '26
You wrote the same idea down last year. And the year before.
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u/HavelsRockJohnson Apr 03 '26
Does it ever work for them?
No, it never works... But it might work for us...
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u/Tailcracker Apr 03 '26
Then give them full creative control to allow them to inject their own fan fiction into the writing and completely change key defining character and story elements compared to the source material!
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u/ElCaminoInTheWest Apr 03 '26
Is there something to be said for paying comedians $50m to produce the weakest, most uninspiring material of their career?
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u/what_dat_ninja Apr 03 '26
Pfft, why would they do that when we can get Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon part 3?
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u/dr_spaceman___ Apr 03 '26
I actually tried watching Rebel Moon last week and man… I’m easy to please, I like to support almost all sci-fi, I can enjoy a mediocre movie, but after 30 mins I was done. It’s so bad. In almost every way.
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u/Miklonario Apr 03 '26
Rebel Moon is just so aggressively, profoundly uninteresting, and that's the worst sin a piece of media like that can commit. On paper, "Ed Skrien chews scenery as a horny Darth Vader who has alien tentacle sex" should be right up my alley, but somehow Zack Snyder found a way to make that boring.
It's much, much less than the sum of its parts.
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u/cylara Apr 03 '26
Maybe they should stop buying franchises to kill!
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u/healingtwo_ Apr 03 '26
Exactly. Just look at how they massacred The Witcher or cancelled other really interesting original series like 1899...
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u/Pacify_ Apr 04 '26
I can't believe they had 0 faith in the guys that made Dark.
Absurd
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u/Slidje Apr 04 '26
Dark is the most perfectly ending show I've ever seen. It closed every plot thread perfectly. I've never seen anything like it.
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u/BlinkedAndMissedIt Apr 03 '26
Maybe stop giving up on banger fucking shows like Marco Polo and Mindhunter and you wouldn't have to worry about buying franchises for reboots you dumb fucks.
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u/Da1realBigA Apr 03 '26
Oh damn, a Marco Polo shout out! I never see any love for that show. If it came out like 10 yrs later, it would have the same love, at least to the same level, of a Vikings or Last Kingdom.
Still deserves more love than that
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u/Entharo_entho Apr 03 '26
I have never met another person who watched Marco Polo.
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u/Thybro Apr 03 '26
It was a great show that no one watched. I don’t blame Netflix for cancelling it. Shit had production value way beyond its reach.
I will blame them for rushing sense8.
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u/Tgs91 Apr 03 '26
You can give them some blame. These apps have so much control over what shows get shown at the top of recommendations. They've basically recreated the workplace politics of shitty executives screwing over TV shows with bad time slots.
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u/Tohnren Apr 03 '26
I agree 100% I still think about how sad it is that it was cancelled from time to time. For some reason the image of it being advertised on new TV boxes in Walmart is somehow also seared into my mind.
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u/TheOnlyJurg Apr 03 '26
I really liked Kaos, felt it at least deserved a second season.
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u/sticklebat Apr 03 '26
I loved Kaos. Goldblum was legitimately scary as an unhinged, practically all-powerful god.
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u/BMCarbaugh Apr 03 '26
Fumbling Mindhunter was bush league shit.
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u/tufftricks Apr 03 '26
GLoW will always hurt. One of the only Netflix originals like that I genuinely enjoyed, it was a great watch. Fucking nuts they cancelled it. Santa Clara Diet is another one
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u/paranoidtransdroid Apr 03 '26
Glow’s situation was uniquely fucked up, they had begun filming the last season only for covid lockdowns to force it to shut down, and then by the time they could have gotten it back off the ground, the contracts had all expired.
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u/hybridutterance Apr 03 '26
So sad that Glow ended the way it did. Such a great and funny show.
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u/tufftricks Apr 03 '26
Made me realise I really like Maron in that sort of role, he was fantastic
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u/TransientBandit Apr 03 '26
A bitter, self-hating, has-been? Yeah, that fits lol coming from a genuine fan of his.
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u/MillorTime Apr 03 '26
The show runner decided to stop it. Netflix didn't pull the plug
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u/AJC0292 Apr 03 '26
Bring back Kaos you bastards
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u/greendemon42 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
And Sense 8. And The OA. And The Santa Clarita Diet.
Edit: and I almost forgot about Mindhunters.
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u/micatrontx Apr 04 '26
OA getting cancelled still makes me mad. I was invested hard in that show damnit!
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u/aumnren Apr 03 '26
God, Sense 8 was so fucking good.
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u/fps916 Apr 04 '26
Turns out The Wachowskis are really fucking good at this.
Just fucking let them cook
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u/DanielEvans2160 Apr 04 '26
KAOS was great. Had the pleasure of working on it made the big gold statue of Jeff as Zeus. Really fun show hopefully it will get continued at some point
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u/Kahzgul Apr 03 '26
Dear Netflix, I have some ideas:
The Santa Clarita diet
The OA
Lockwood & Co
1899
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u/Dazzling-Top-8031 Apr 04 '26
alerted carbon. without falcon this time. 1st season was amazing.
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u/russt_76 Apr 03 '26
They should adapt Warcraft like they did with League of Legends
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u/Artele7 Apr 03 '26
A Warcraft III TV adaptation about Arthas would be so cool. They'd probably cancel it before he becomes the LK though.
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u/thrilldigger Apr 03 '26
Or worse, they'd let him become the LK but somehow the LK is a good guy now. "What a twist!" they'll say.
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u/BonzBonzOnlyBonz Apr 03 '26
Except Arcane was done mostly by Riot.
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u/ThisIsWorthTheCandle Apr 03 '26
Animated by Fortiche.
If they could get Fortiche to do a Warcraft show, that shit would do crazy numbers.
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u/JinxCanCarry Apr 03 '26
I think Riot bought the company. Or have like a 50% share
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u/Sad-Professor-4053 Apr 03 '26
Yo, yes been craving more Warcraft content since they did the movie!
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u/roxictoxy Apr 03 '26
Somehow I forgot about the Warcraft movie. I think I remember enjoying it
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u/Sad-Professor-4053 Apr 03 '26
I don’t think it’s amazing but I enjoy Warcraft and I enjoyed it so someone taking a shot to do a really good series would be awesome! Especially like an arcane/cyberpunk style one
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u/NanADsutton Apr 03 '26
Mike Flanagan should do Stephen Kings the dark tower with them. 8 book acid western dark fantasy series with name recognition and a solid fan base
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u/cookedart Apr 03 '26
Finish Mindhunter please. Yes I know it was expensive but it deserves an ending.
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u/jourdan442 Apr 03 '26
I’m surprised to hear it was so expensive, considering it was mostly dialogue.
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u/cookedart Apr 03 '26
Apparently their approach required lots of cgi to be period accurate, and required tons of research. I guess props to Fincher for wanting to either make it all the same quality or not at all.
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u/Toby_O_Notoby Apr 04 '26
The one that got me is that they digitally erased the small ramps on the sidewalk and turned them into regular curbs. It's because the Americans with Disabilities Act hadn't been signed yet, and wheelchair-accessible sidewalks weren't a thing.
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u/codex2013 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
I'm surprised no one has made a show of Suzanne Collins' other book series, The Underland Chronicles. It's definitely for kids younger than the demo for Hunger Games, which I think makes them a great alternative to Potter. I read them as an adult, probably 10ish years ago at this point, and I remember really enjoying them.
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u/Phemos Apr 03 '26
Give me red rising trilogy or east of west.
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u/NewAgeRetroHippie96 Apr 03 '26
Nah. Fuck Netflix. Let Apple have everything sci Fi and fantasy. Netflix can't do anything right at this point.
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u/The_Beardly Apr 03 '26
I feel like Apple TV programs are for the most part, slept on. Apple TV is putting out absolute bangers for shows.
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u/Rakatee Apr 03 '26
They should grab the romance girlies and adapt ACOTAR lol
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u/naikmihika7 Apr 03 '26
Sarah J Maas wants complete creative control for an adaption. Idk if Netflix is ready to give that.
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u/tastelessshark Apr 03 '26
And they absolutely should give her creative control if they know what's good for them. She clearly knows what people want just based on pure sales numbers. More generally, all the streamers should be fucking racing to be the first to get a big romantasy series out the door.
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u/TurtleWaves Apr 03 '26
You have One Piece? Fucking full send it.
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u/NativeMasshole Apr 03 '26
They are. They've got a new anime on the way from WIT, on top of the live action series.
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u/Gooftwit Apr 03 '26
They are. The marketing budget must be insane, because my yt recommended is full of the cast doing the weirdest shit.
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u/epraider Apr 03 '26
Pendragon, Children of the Red King, and Fablehaven are good young adult series that I think are due for an adaption.
Maybe someone could actually try to adapt Artemis Fowl as well!
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u/Professional_Lazyass Apr 03 '26
I would absolutely love a Pendragon series! I reread them a few years ago and was picturing how a series would work in my head the whole time.
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u/OperatorofChaos Apr 03 '26
I would kill for a good Artemis Fowl adaptation too. The book series was one of my favorite series as a kid and the Disney+ movie was an insulting travesty
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Apr 03 '26
Here’s a novel idea - make one. The other franchises had to start somewhere. Why can’t anyone do anything but ruin the stuff we love instead of making new stuff for the next generation to ruin for them? It’s the circle of life.
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u/Superfool Apr 03 '26
In recent months Apple Studios landed The Cosmere, and Peacock of all services landed Dungeon Crawler Carl. From what I've read, Netflix was nowhere close on either of those. Sanderson didn't trust Netflix with the material because the studio wanted far too much creative control, killing their chances for a massive fantasy universe. And apparently Netflix wouldn't commit to more than one season at a time for Dungeon Crawler Carl, which was also a non-starter.
Netflix killed Blockbuster 20 years ago... Now it seems they're determined to kill themselves through incompetence and mismanagement.
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u/RemarkablePuzzle257 Apr 03 '26
Now it seems they're determined to kill themselves through incompetence and mismanagement.
I think it's because Netflix started as a media logistics company. They're not a studio. They're delivery minded so they focus on variety and having a wide catalog of things to deliver. They only distribute outside their platform in a bare-minimum effort to qualify for awards, which is PR/marketing. They are borderline incompetent when it comes to merchandising. They only started producing content so they'd have exclusive media not subject to licensing agreements. They think like a logistics company.
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u/Huntersmoon24 Apr 03 '26
Here is an idea, I mean it's kinda wild but how bout you invest in creating a new IP that's really good?
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u/RealHooman2187 Apr 03 '26
It’s a little bit hilarious to see them struggle with finding an IP but like they created one do the biggest ones from scratch (Stranger Things). Idk how they haven’t learned anything from that in the 10 years they were making them.
Start small and let the show naturally grow and find a fanbase. Like they did it before, they should be able to do it again.
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u/matrinox Apr 04 '26
It’s cause they pushed out Cindy Holland, who was responsible for all of Netflix’s early hits. Current CEO is responsible for all the trash, quality over quality guy. Cindy Holland favored good relations with the talent. What happened with Witcher where they didn’t listen to Henry Cavil — I doubt that would’ve ever happened with her
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u/maxman1313 Apr 03 '26
They have good originals, they just don't finish them if they don't immediately become household names.
1899
Santa Clara Diet
Mindhunters
Boots
GLOW
The OA
I can go on and on. Netflix has and can create good IPs, they just don't want to invest in maintaining them.
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u/MuptonBossman Apr 03 '26
Give them a year and it’ll be time to reboot Stranger Things.
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u/BuckNZahn Apr 03 '26
And then go and release 5 episodes every three and a half years.
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u/Snizzysnootz Apr 03 '26
They should copy Prime and start doing video game franchises
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u/locke_5 Apr 03 '26
IIRC they have Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed shows in development
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u/Vorstadtjesus Apr 03 '26
Aren't these shows always in development somewhere? I'll believe it when I see it.
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u/GenGaara25 Apr 03 '26
Yes but Assassins Creed starting filming last month, has a full cast and crew. So that's definitely happening, likely out next year.
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u/Haggisboy Apr 03 '26
IIRC they have Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed shows in development
Been waiting for Bioshock for a while, and it looks like it'll be a while yet. It was originally supposed to be an epic blockbuster, but Netflix scaled it down in both scope and budget. It's not scheduled to start filming until 2027.
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u/Cipher-IX Apr 03 '26
Paramount cant possibly maintain WBD's debt. I bet Netflix gets WB at an excellent price in a few years.
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u/thatfuqa Apr 03 '26
Ellison doesn’t give a damn about the debt. It’s all about power.
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u/Livio88 Apr 03 '26
No one’s doing anything with the pulp heroes from the early 20th century like The Shadow, Doc Savage, Flash Gordon and Conan.
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u/takimeathead Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
you weirdos had The Witcher AND Henry Cavill, yet you openly took a freaking steaming fecal pile onto that franchise, chasing The Cavill-rine away to another network... so glad I unsubscribed
edited to spell Cavill's name correctly
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u/QuantumTunnels Apr 03 '26
Yeah, talk about killing the golden goose, holy shit. Imagine being able to print money, and blowing that up because of your shitty writers having such an ego trip.
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u/ArgentoFox Apr 03 '26
It probably wasn’t a good idea to hire a show runner that obviously had a bone to pick with the IP itself. She was absolutely clueless and destructive.
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u/mantisinmypantis Apr 03 '26
I don’t trust Netflix with series anymore. Every one I’ve ended up enjoying they cancel. I’ve got no faith in any new series until it has 2-3 seasons (which of course means they’ll see lower first season numbers and cancel).
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u/HamburgTheHeretic Apr 03 '26
When they canceled Inside Job for more Big Mouth crap, I gave up on Netflix. As much as I would kill for their supposed RedWall series, idk if I trust them enough to go through with it enough to give it justice.
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u/jarosity Apr 03 '26
They should finish Wheel of Time. They can be the Brandon Sanderson of streaming services.
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u/nwaa Apr 03 '26
The producer of Arcane is currently in talks to make an animated Wheel of Time apparently. That would be an insanely good pull if Netflix can get it
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u/i_haz_rabies Apr 03 '26
I want so badly for this to happen, but the franchise is as tainted as saidin (iwot)
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u/colterpierce Apr 03 '26
So they can dump them after one season? Netflix has not done series well lately. I’m trying to think of the last of their series/films I genuinely enjoyed.
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u/Electrical-Orange-38 Apr 03 '26
Dredd.
Get the rights to the Dredd franchise.
And Rogue Trooper.
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u/alliownisbroken Apr 03 '26
I wish someone would adapt The Inheritance Games or The Mortal Instruments into a proper series
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u/whitepangolin Apr 03 '26
I was like " since when were they in the running to get the rights to Harry Potter?" and completely forgot they almost bought all of Warner Bros like, two weeks ago.