[becauseiam]

I think the immediate reason why a lot of the older movies are not coming back is partly due to a rights management thing (films are usually negotiated for terms of n months/years, and renewing the contracts is a cost), but also they impact the size of CDN working set. The "long tail" where 90% of traffic is accessing only 10% of the files kept on origin makes for an inefficient proposition for an SVOD service. This is even more of a pressure when you are both the VOD service AND the CDN. I suspect Netflix spends a lot of man hours finding which titles perform in consistent viewership and prioritise those for the reasons above - besides, how many times can a person watch Breakfast at Tiffany's per month?