[baddox]

> It doesn’t work like that. A lot of the networks’s and Netflix’s breakout shows were not planned to be great.

That might be true for a lot of breakout shows, but not all of them. House of Cards was arguably Netflix' first breakout show, and Netflix outbid other networks for House of Cards when they were just starting to focus on original programming. That was always painted in showbiz media as a very deliberate plan based on Netflix' data about their users' preferences.

[1123581321]

We know now that they didn’t really have that data at the time. They just heard Fincher was available and bought his idea unseen for a lot of money so no one else could get to propose to him.

[thiagocesar]

And as soon as they got data involved, the plot quality decreased immensely. By season 3, most people had given up on the show already.

[notahacker]

Netflix pinning a lot on winning a bidding war for Fincher sound suspiciously like investors placing massively outsized bets on the Dreamworks/Disney guy with the startup savvy CEO being the Next Big Thing in digital media...

[hardwaregeek]

House of Cards was an adaptation of a widely acclaimed British TV show, directed by one of the best Hollywood directors, starring an A-list actor. Plus it probably didn't cost 1.8 billion.

[npunt]

Yep, entirely different risk profile. Netflix already had a brand, platform, and customers, and they already offered TV shows and weren't experimenting with a new format. The House of Cards risk was all in execution, not brand, concept, product, talent, etc.

[jimmySixDOF]

Actually they are all based on the book by Michael Dobbs (1989) who was the chief of staff for Margaret Thatcher for a few years. I heard him at a book show say he wrote it almost by accident as therapy on a vacation after getting squeezed out of politics.

[enjeyw]

The difference is that the sample size for Fincher is a lot larger - 9 of his 10 films have grossed >100mil, so we have very good confidence on his hit rate.

Startup Savvy CEOs have 2, maybe 3 successful companies under their belt, so it's harder to judge how much of their success is due to repeatable factors.

[notahacker]

Katzenberg revived Disney and cofounded Dreamworks so he's not exactly short of samples of his ability to produce hit movies. Also getting the scaleup eBay CEO to sort out the internet bit was a bonus...

[enitihas]

House of cards also had the benefit of having a 2 time Oscar winner on the cast.