According to Kevin Spacey, Netflix was the only buyer that didn't want "House of Cards" to do a pilot, which, when you think of it, would have been an immense waste of time, talent and money.
Although it's more expensive to do a separate pilot, it's not always a waste of time or money. In many cases, ideas that on paper are very good don't translate well. A pilot lets you catch these problems and remedy them. If you go straight to series you may end up only finding out about these issues when it's too late to fix them.
A few good examples of this: the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries. The US version of Life on Mars got completed re-located and re-cast as the pilot was just bad (...most people wouldn't call what ended up as 'good', but it was a vast improvement on the pilot).
Neither approach is without its problems. Take a show like Game of Thrones, which is very expensive to make. On the one hand, HBO could have saved millions of dollars by not ordering a pilot. On the other, it was pretty clear once it came back from post production that the approach the writers had originally taken wasn't going to work, and a number of changes were made to make the show more accessible to people who hadn't read the books.
So HBO did 'waste' several million dollars on a pilot that never aired, but the ability for the creative team to review the pilot before embarking on a full series commitment meant many changes could be made that resulted in a better show. HBO have easily recouped the lost money.
It's interesting that Amazon have taken the opposite approach to Netflix, and ordered a large number of pilots rather than going straight into series commitments.
For House of Cards, where known commodities like Kevin Spacey and David Fincher were already attached to a known story (House of Cards is a remake of a British series from the late 80s) it probably doesn't make sense to do a pilot.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. None of the Netflix originals so far has done a traditional "pilot" approach and, while I was there at least, there was no desire to start taking that approach.
The Netflix model is really completely different than traditional TV. Take Hemlock Grove as an example. Critically panned and considered by most people in HN circles to be a "bad" show--but (without going into detail) I can absolutely say it has been VERY successful for Netflix.
I have heard this before, and just to inject my own experience while I like House of Cards it took me awhile to get through it. Hemlock Grove though I went on a complete binge, every episode that ended I wanted to watch the next one.
The thing I've heard most often about Hemlock Grove sounds something like this, "It's really, REALLY bad! Oh man, it was so terrible! I watched the whole thing in like 2 days and it sucked! I can't wait for Season 2--it's gonna be terrible!"
I found Hemlock Grove interesting, the story progressed really slowly, luckily Netflix allows all-you-can-eat watching so I end up watching the whole season in a couple of weeks - where if I had to wait a week in between episodes I likely wouldn't have bothered. Overall I thought the production quality was high with good actors/acting and I liked that it had an unusual story-line even though I don't really like that genre. Will definitely watch next season, tho there are also better things on Netflix.
> the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries
Oh, that's what it was then. I downloaded the first series of Sherlock and was surprised to see the same first story twice.
But I thought the first version was vastly superior to the second one; it had much less money, which, in my opinion, allowed it to be more intense and more "real".
Whatever you think, it's most interesting to watch both!
Why not use pilots like kickstarters? Produce a bunch of promising pilots, have consumers "vote" or even "fund" what pilots they want to see made into TV series?
Unfortunately their content is pretty cruddy. I watched the Zombieland pilot and one other and they were both borderline unwatchable. Bad acting / writing / production, etc.
According to Kevin Spacey, Netflix was the only buyer that didn't want "House of Cards" to do a pilot, which, when you think of it, would have been an immense waste of time, talent and money.
I agree with most of Kevin's Spacey's comments but this one was a huge gamble for Netflix. I think pilots in the digital realm will be the media version of an MVP and seed financing before an A round.
Also define "immense" waste, a Pilot is an episode you're making anyway. There's some added expense from ramping production up and down temporarily but its no where near as bad as making 13 episodes where the last 7 or 8 aren't useable.
The IT Crowd is a successful show in the UK but the pilot for the US version was garbage, ruining almost every joke from the original. Even though having a successful predecessor helps a show somewhat, there is still a lot of room for error.
Except "House of Cards" was a political soaper (west wing) with a charismatic anti-hero (the shield, etc.)
"The IT crowd" as a goofy farce had no American counterpart and was pretty much doomed to failure. Better translation examples would be the American "The Office" (based on other office-based comedies) and the American "Coupling" (a "Friends" clone.) "Coupling" failed because the first American episode was nearly a shot-for-shot remake. You might have been able to get away with that in the 90s, but not in the Netflix/Bittorrent era.
Actually, the bigger reason (as I understand it) that Coupling failed in the US had more to do with American network TV not being at all comfortable with the content of Coupling. The humor was generally "neutered" for American TV and the resulting product was so watered down it was doomed to fail.
I was going to disagree because some U.S. remakes of British shows have not been as good or have been terrible, but in-general tried and true products in a market in one country have a better chance of succeeding in another country in similar form. This generalization pretty much carries over into most products and services.
Something else that would be interesting would be to show the # record/CD/mp3 sales of cover songs of successful original vs. originals by the same band doing the cover.
How is a pilot a waste of time, talent, and money? Pilots are basically the MVPs of TV shows. In many cases it's less wasteful to develop and test a pilot than to develop an entire season of a show, only to have it fail. (Of course, even pilots are imperfect indicators of a show's potential for success, but now we're diving into a deeper rabbit hole and a digression).
Nobody's claiming pilots are cheap, efficient, or anything of the sort. But they do serve a purpose. In the TV development business, it's better to know if a $1M pilot is going to bomb than a $10M+ season is going to bomb.
Netflix is in a unique position to change the way development is traditionally done, however, and over time, if they're successful, they may start to eliminate the need for traditional pilots -- or at least figure out how to make the pilot a more truly MVP, i.e., a lot quicker and less costly. But for the time being, they're paying above-market rates for development and production, and if anything, they're taking bigger risks on production and development than networks do.
It's all part of a gameplan, and I respect that. They're buying a lot of short-term risk in hope of nailing a sustainable, scalable, long-term model for original content. It's basically what HBO had to do back in the day, and what AMC had to do to become what it is today. This is why Netflix doesn't need to buy AMC; Netflix needs to replicate AMC (sort of), and eventually replace AMC (among others).
Pilots warp the content, you've got one shot to win or lose it all so there can't be any spacing. Works great for some stories, doesn't work for some others. By the same logic, you shouldn't start a company because 90% will fail, you should start 10 or 15 to try and have a winner or two in your portfolio, right? When your the guy running one of those, don't you want to give it your best and learn from mistakes and not assume that failure rate?
If Netflix can assess the content pre-pilot and then give the creators the money and space to tell their story, they don't need AMC or any of the old media, the creators will come to them. They're now selling DVDs of some of their content, they could potentially even syndicate it back... They have a lot of tools, they just need stories.
"By the same logic, you shouldn't start a company because 90% will fail, you should start 10 or 15 to try and have a winner or two in your portfolio, right?"
That's not at all the logic I was following, but interestingly enough, that's basically the VC portfolio strategy: counting on 1 company to earn 100x all the others combined. Spreading out the investment such that any one, or two, or ten can afford to fail so long as one wins big. Remarkably similar economics, in fact. It's how the TV networks have operated for so long. Networks aren't like founders; they're like VCs. The series creators are like the founders (sort of), the studios are like angel investors or accelerators, and the networks are like VCs.
But that's beside the point. My logic is that a pilot is a lower-cost proof of concept of a series (and even a pilot is extremely expensive and often wasteful). If anything, production companies and studios (not networks) should be making them, and should be finding faster, cheaper, and more minimal ways to do so -- eventually rendering the necessity for a full-fledged pilot obsolete. There is no reason why Lean series development and product/market testing can't happen, especially if a company like Netflix is the buyer.
To a certain extent, this is actually starting to happen. A lot of studios (again, not networks; let's be clear about that distinction) are pre-marketing and pre-releasing proof of concept videos and other materials before pitching them to networks and going down the tradition pilot path.
"If Netflix can assess the content pre-pilot and then give the creators the money and space to tell their story, they don't need AMC or any of the old media, the creators will come to them."
I never said Netflix needs AMC; in fact, I recall saying the exact opposite. Currently, FYI, Netflix is playing the "old media" game in going to, paying for (at a premium), and developing with the "content" marketplace in Hollywood. I don't think enough people quite grok that. As I said, this seems like a necessary step until such time as Netflix commands enough respect and power within that market to rewrite the rules and change the economics of distribution.
A pilot for a series with Kevin Spacey and David Fincher attached is a waste of time, talent and money. They are known quantities with proven track records.
You either give them the money to produce the series or you don't.
In this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc he explains the series itself doesn't work well in a pilot: He wanted long story lines, and multiple complex characters, both of which are impossible in a pilot.
A few good examples of this: the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries. The US version of Life on Mars got completed re-located and re-cast as the pilot was just bad (...most people wouldn't call what ended up as 'good', but it was a vast improvement on the pilot).
Neither approach is without its problems. Take a show like Game of Thrones, which is very expensive to make. On the one hand, HBO could have saved millions of dollars by not ordering a pilot. On the other, it was pretty clear once it came back from post production that the approach the writers had originally taken wasn't going to work, and a number of changes were made to make the show more accessible to people who hadn't read the books.
So HBO did 'waste' several million dollars on a pilot that never aired, but the ability for the creative team to review the pilot before embarking on a full series commitment meant many changes could be made that resulted in a better show. HBO have easily recouped the lost money.
It's interesting that Amazon have taken the opposite approach to Netflix, and ordered a large number of pilots rather than going straight into series commitments.