N+1 Magazine has a piece up that will surely be making the rounds.
Netflix execs have been telling their screenwriters to have characters “announce what they’re doing” so that viewers who have a program on in the background can follow along without having to miss plot strands. There’s barely been any pushback, until now.
Several screenwriters, who’ve worked for the streamer, are telling the outlet that a common note from company executives is to have characters purposely lay out exposition to the wandering viewer. After all, focusing your time on a 90-minute movie is certainly not an option for the token Netflix viewer.
Here’s an example from their #1 hit movie “Irish Wish,” starring Lindsay Lohan.
“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in “Irish Wish.” “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”
Netflix apparently also has thousands of micro-genres they adhere by in greenlighting projects, including “casual viewing” which is used for movies/TV that go down best when you’re not paying attention.
Almost every screenwriter adheres by the notion of "show, don't tell," but Netflix seems to have spat on that rule and are now forcing their writers to break it, and then some. It’s almost miraculous that this was the same streamer who, just a few years ago, decided to make “Roma” and “The Irishman.”
This latest news comes just a year after it was reported that Netflix was asking its writers and directors to make sure there was enough drama in a movie’s first five minutes so that the viewer keeps watching and doesn’t turn it off.