At the Oscars, host Conan O’Brien teamed up with Sterling K. Brown for a comedic bit built around the notion that Netflix pushes filmmakers and showrunners to regularly recap their storylines, ensuring distracted viewers can keep up without getting confused.
Netflix executives are now tackling this topic, saying they reportedly “laughed off” the idea that they require movies and TV shows to repeatedly recap their plots for audiences.
“There is no such principle. We actually all laughed when we watched that bit at the Oscars, but there’s no such principle,” Netflix film boss Dan Lin said. “I mean, if you watch our movies or TV shows, we don’t repeat our plot. So I don’t know where that comment came from. Certainly, we are focused on making great movies.”
Most recently, Matt Damon, who worked on the streamer’s ‘RIP,’ asserted that a Netflix movie has to “reiterate the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones.” He also noted Netflix’s supposed insistence that every movie open with an action sequence.
Not so, Lin insists. “We’re just focused on making great movies. There’s no formula or procedure that you just mentioned.”
His colleague, Netflix CCO Bela Bajaria, added, “I think it’s so offensive to creators and filmmakers to think that, first of all, we would give them a bad note like that and they would just take it. So I think, you know, haters gotta hate and people have got to make things up.”
Is Damon what one would qualify as a “hater”?
Regardless, even before Damon, the claim traces back a few years, when N+1 Magazine published a report detailing how Netflix executives were allegedly demanding that screenwriters and directors “announce what they’re doing” so viewers who have a movie playing in the background can follow along without missing key plot points.
Netflix’s supposed demands went further, insisting that there be enough “action” or “drama” within a movie’s first five minutes to prevent viewers from turning it off.
That report has stayed with me for the past three years. Now, whenever I watch a Netflix original, I actively look for this blueprint to appear on screen, and it rarely disappoints. That’s why I just can’t believe Lin and Bajaria’s claims that they don’t demand this.
Several screenwriters who have worked for the streamer told the outlet that a common executive note is to have characters deliberately lay out exposition for the wandering viewer. After all, devoting full attention to a 90-minute movie isn’t always an option for the archetypal Netflix audience member.
Almost every screenwriter lives by the rule of “show, don’t tell,” but Netflix appears to have discarded that principle, instead forcing writers to do the opposite—and then some. It’s almost miraculous that this is the same streamer that, just last decade, chose to make “Roma” and “The Irishman.”