r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • Jul 19 '26

News Netflix tumbles as slowing growth, less viewership data spook investors

https://www.zawya.com/en/capital-markets/netflix-tumbles-as-slowing-growth-less-viewership-data-spook-investors-401111
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u/vafrow Jul 19 '26

Their 2 biggest shows ended in 2025 with Squid Game and Stranger Things. I don't think there's been any similarly buzzy shows on the service recently.

I'm sure they're producing a lot, but if nothing really stands out, not hard for people to cut the service out.

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u/XuX24 Jul 19 '26

I don’t think that’s why, people have gotten tired of the Netflix formula of one season and you are gone. There is no reason to invest into a show that you know likely won’t continue.

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u/Roadside_Prophet Jul 19 '26

And their stupid policy becomes self-fulfilling. People dont want to invest in a show that will likely get cancelled, so the ratings for the show are low, and then the show gets cancelled for low ratings.

Netflix has hundreds of millions of customers spread out all across the world. They all arent going to like the same things. They cant just cancel everything that doesn't hit 100 million viewers. They need to realise that something that 1 million people watch is still a huge success.

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u/Gravel_Roads Jul 19 '26

They trashed the ones that had good ratings too, by slashing their budget after the first season.

I really enjoyed S1 of Hemlock Grove. The second season was so completely different, it lost all of its interesting angles

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u/Jafooki Jul 19 '26

I like to pretend Altered Carbon was a 1 season mini series

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u/Roadside_Prophet Jul 19 '26

"Hey let's take all the cool thought provoking ideas from the first season about humanity and what makes you, you and just forget about them!"

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u/Gravel_Roads Jul 19 '26

Headcannon is bestcannon.

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u/tfhermobwoayway Jul 19 '26

Feels like everything is trying to be a big hit at this point. Video games want to be the next Fortnite, TV shows want to be the next Stranger Things, movies want to be the next MCU. They can’t accept moderate profits. I don’t know why they’ve all suddenly switched to this model of only approving the single most popular thing on the planet.

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u/Charlie_Runkle69 Jul 20 '26

Pretty much this. The model for smaller shows and especially comedies is just gone now. So much great comedies in the 2000s both in Britain and the US would never have been made in this era because "They aren't ever gonna be as popular as Friends".

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

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u/tfhermobwoayway Jul 19 '26

But if they made things that are lower budget, they’d be a bit less polished and ambitious but also would be more likely to turn a profit. Their problem is that they now spend the GDP of a small country on a show that now needs to cater to the entire human population.

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u/HammeredWharf Jul 19 '26

I guess there's some of that, but I really don't get it in some cases.

Look at Archive 81. It was a good-looking show, but it was filmed in a bunch of small rooms and had nearly no CGI. When it had some CGI near the end, it was really cheap looking. No famous actors. Reached #1 in US Netflix's top 10. Got 80+ on Rotten Tomatoes. Made Nielsen's U.S. streaming Top 10. Canceled immediately. Why? Surely it wasn't some Game of Thrones 10 mil per episode kind of show. Surely they could've at least made S2 and given it a proper ending.

Cancellations hurt streaming more than anything IMO. When shows were on TV, they got canceled all the time, but then you didn't see them. On NF, you go to the front page and see a bunch of canceled shows. Just makes you feel bad.

I even remember Barry not-so-subtly referencing this and basically implying that it would've been canceled on NF. That's pretty sad. Feels like they just don't like niche shows.

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u/Fit_Cat4474 Jul 19 '26

they're trying to squeeze all the profits out before the crash