S2 is set three years later, and by the end of the second episode, Gi-hun has successfully finagled his way back into the game after winning Russian roulette against the game’s recruiter and tracking down game overseer Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) at a Halloween party. The desperate players this time include a YouTuber who launched a failed crypto scam and a couple of victims of said scam bent on revenge. There’s also a compulsive gambler and his mother, a rapper addicted to ecstasy, a loud and neurotic self-appointed shaman, a former Marine, and a transgender woman who once served in special forces.
Meanwhile, Front Man’s police officer brother, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), has hired mercenaries to track down the island where the game is staged. As in the first season, alliances form and shift as the games proceed, and betrayals abound, culminating in a cliffhanger ending. That’s because series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk conceived of S2 and S3 as a single season, but there were too many episodes, so he split them over two seasons.
Squid Game S3 will premiere on Netflix later this year. Other than the new killer doll, we don’t know much about what’s in store for Gi-hun and his quest to destroy the game other than that it will pick up where S2 left off and will most likely end with a final showdown against Front Man. Is the cynical Front Man right about human nature ensuring that the game will never end?
FIFA’s announcement suggested that it expects to reach a larger audience and increase US engagement by airing on Netflix. FIFA said that 1.2 billion people watched the 2019 Women’s World Cup, ESPN noted. Netflix has already demonstrated the ability to lure a massive amount of viewers to exclusive sports matches. In November, Netflix claimed the “most-streamed sporting event ever” when it streamed a boxing event centered on a Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight and reportedly garnered 65 million live concurrent streams.
Per FIFA’s announcement, Netflix will stream the tournaments in English and Spanish via a “dual telecast.” Under the deal, Netflix will also release a documentary series about the biggest players ahead of both tournaments. Brazil will host the 2027 event, while the host country for the 2031 Women’s World Cup has yet to be announced.
The news comes as streaming platforms continue battling over sports. Currently, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox are in a legal battle over plans to launch a joint sports streaming app, Venu, which is being challenged by sports streamer Fubo over antitrust allegations. The case is set to go to trial in October.
Meanwhile, fans are adjusting to changes in how sports events are aired, learning to bounce between channels and streaming services to find their events and dealing with buffering and other technical problems. At times, some of the biggest fans, like NFL player Tariq Woolen, have resorted to illegal pirating to avoid complications and fees, underscoring pressure for streaming services to perfect and simplify the streaming of the live events that they’re eagerly snatching up.
Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game.
The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we’re finally getting it this year for Christmas. Netflix just released the official trailer.
(Spoilers for S1 below.)
The first season followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae, seen earlier this year in The Acolyte), a down-on-his-luck gambler who has little left to lose when he agrees to play children’s playground games against 455 other players for money. The twist? If you lose a game, you die. If you cheat, you die. And if you win, you might also die.
“The grotesque spectacle of Squid Game is where it gets most of its appeal, but it resonates because of how relatable Gi-hun and the rest of the game’s contestants are,” Ars Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham wrote in our 2021 year-end TV roundup. “Alienated from society and each other, driven by guilt or shame or pride or desperation, each of the players we get to know is inescapably human, which is why Squid Game is more than just a gory sideshow.
In the S1 finale, Gi-hun faced off against fellow finalist and childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) in the titular “squid game.” He won their fight but refused to kill his friend, begging Sang-woo to stop the game by invoking a special clause in their contract whereby they get to live—but do not get the prize money. Sang-woo instead stabbed himself in the neck and asked Gi-hun to take care of his mother. Wracked with guilt, Gi-hun was about to fly to America to live with his daughter when he spotted the game recruiter trying to entice another desperate person. He didn’t get on the plane, deciding instead to try and re-enter the game and take it down from the inside.
Netflix started blocking VPN and proxy providers as early as 2015, then stepped up its efforts in 2021. VPN providers aiming to keep up geofence-avoiding services to customers would sometimes lease IP addresses generally associated with residential IP subnets. This resulted in Netflix banning larger swaths of IP addresses that VPNs were using as exit proxies.
Amazon’s Prime Video, Parmount+, and other services, including the BBC, have similarly ramped up efforts to block anything resembling tunneled traffic. Proton has, for example, a guide to “unblock Amazon Prime Video with Proton VPN“; Proton also writes on that page that it “does not condone the use of our VPN service to bypass copyright regulations.”
You can search the web and find freshly updated lists of the best VPNs for getting around various services’ geo-filtering blocks, but the fact that so many are dated by the year, or even month, gives you some clue as to how effective any one solution may be.
For the purposes of getting back to the content you’re entitled to view, or maybe keeping your viewing habits private on an Apple TV you’re using outside your home, Proton VPN is likely more useful. As for the other stuff, hey, it might be worth a shot. Using the Apple TV app requires a paid Proton VPN plan.
In Q2 2022, 78.6 percent thought their ad-free SVOD service had “moderate to very good” stuff to watch. But in Q2 2023, that dropped to 77.4 percent, and in Q2 2024, the percentage fell further to 74.5 percent. For ad-supported SVOD services, the percentage dropped from 74.2 percent in Q2 2023 to 60.8 percent in Q2 2024.
Credit: TiVo
Credit: TiVo
Ars Technica asked TiVo why subscribers may be feeling less satisfied with streaming content quality, and Scott Maddux, VP of global content strategy and business at TiVo parent company Xperi, pointed to some potential reasons while noting that other factors could also be contributors.
“As more and more consumers shift to ad-supported SVOD services, the perception of the content quality may have also shifted downward a bit,” Maddux said.
Maddux also suggested that streaming companies’ financial challenges could be impacting content quality:
The amount of new original content overall on SVODs may be down [year-over-year] as many streamers continue to struggle to hit profitability targets. Without new original content (or exclusive content deals), perceptions of value/differentiation may decline.
Similarly, a CableTV.com survey of 7,130 US streamers released in January 2024 pointed to a drop in subscriber satisfaction with streaming content quality. The publication asked respondents how satisfied they were with their streaming provider’s original content. Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, and Paramount+ all saw their satisfaction rates fall from 2023 to 2024. However, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock all improved from 2023 to 2024.
In September 2023, Whip Media released its 2023 US Streaming Satisfaction report, which surveyed over 2,000 US streaming subscribers. The report said that the 2023 analysis:
clearly indicates that satisfaction among the top tier of streaming platforms is gradually declining while mid-tier platforms rise in overall satisfaction. The narrowing competitive market suggests there is high demand for showing the right mix of original and library content—and consistently maintaining a delightful viewer experience—in order to drive an overall value that subscribers expect.
Whip Media’s 2023 report found that Apple TV+, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, and Prime Video all showed gains in terms of the percentage of subscribers satisfied with the quality and variety of original content available on the platforms from 2022 to 2023.
Enlarge/ Ad-free Basic subscribers will be crane-kicked off the plan soon.
Netflix/YouTube
Netflix today confirmed suspicions that it will stop letting people pay $12 per month to stream without commercials.
The ad-free Basic plan was the cheapest way to watch Netflix without commercials. The plan limits users to 720p resolution and one device and lets people download content. Netflix stopped offering the Basic plan to new subscribers in January. In June, Netflix started booting subscribers in the UK and Canada off the plan and automatically put them onto a cheaper subscription plan with ads.
In a letter to shareholders today [PDF], Netflix confirmed publicly for the first time that it “will now start” to phase out the ad-free Basic plan in the US and France. This will make the cheapest commercial-free Netflix plan $15.49/month in the US. That Standard plan supports up to two devices, downloads, and 1080p resolution.
Netflix thinks killing the Basic plan will help it gain more subscribers who watch commercials, which, on average, generates more revenue for the company.
As expected from a streaming company these days, Netflix touted its ad tier to shareholders, noting that the $7 tier now represents “over 45 percent” of new sign-ups in areas where it’s sold. Per Netflix’s letter, ads will only be an increasingly larger part of its strategy, as Netflix aims to “achieve critical ad subscriber scale for advertisers in our ad countries in 2025, creating a strong base from which we can further increase our ad membership in 2026 and beyond.”
The news comes as streamers grapple with increasing streaming subscription costs. Netflix most recently hiked pricing in October. In January, the company suggested to shareholders that more price hikes were possible, saying that it would “occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect” platform improvements.
Not cozying up with competition
If today’s news makes you hope for a convenient streaming-only deal that lets you subscribe to Netflix and another video streaming service for cheaper, you’re out of luck. Netflix today said it’s not interested in streaming-only bundles.
Bundle deals, which combine streaming and other services for a cheaper subscription rate, have become the streaming industry’s answer to high cancellation rates among subscribers, including those who quickly cancel and resubscribe depending on what’s available to stream that month.
In its letter, Netflix noted that although cable or mobile providers or device-makers may offer deals combining Netflix and another streaming service, Netflix does not make deals that bundle it with another rival streamer, like Disney+ or Max. The company claimed that Netflix is already “a go-to destination,” which “limits the benefit to Netflix of bundling directly with other streamers.”
That means if you’re hoping to save money on your Netflix subscription, which keeps getting more expensive, the only options are to watch Netflix with commercials or get a cable-reminiscent bundle that includes a different kind of service, like Comcast or Verizon Wireless.
We know which option Netflix would like you to pick. But for frustrated streamers, finding a reasonable way to watch all the stuff you want online the way you want keeps getting harder.
Netflix added 8 million subscribers in Q2 2024, it said today. It’s still the biggest video streaming service by subscriber count at 278 million. Amazon Prime Video, which claimed “over 200 million” users in April, follows.
Canada has ordered large online streaming services to pay 5 percent of their Canadian revenue to the government in a program expected to raise $200 million per year to support local news and other home-grown content. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision yesterday after a public comment period.
“Based on the public record, the CRTC is requiring online streaming services to contribute 5 percent of their Canadian revenues to support the Canadian broadcasting system. These obligations will start in the 2024–2025 broadcast year and will provide an estimated $200 million per year in new funding,” the regulator said.
The fees apply to both video and music streaming services. The CRTC imposed the rules despite opposition from Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Netflix, Paramount, and Spotify.
The new fees are scheduled to take effect in September and apply to online streaming services that make at least $25 million a year in Canada. The regulations exclude revenue from audiobooks, podcasts, video game services, and user-generated content. The exclusion of revenue from user-generated content is a win for Google’s YouTube.
The CRTC said it is relying on authority from the Online Streaming Act, which was approved by Canada’s parliament in 2023. The new fees are similar to the ones already imposed on licensed broadcasters.
“The funding will be directed to areas of immediate need in the Canadian broadcasting system, such as local news on radio and television, French-language content, Indigenous content, and content created by and for equity-deserving communities, official language minority communities, and Canadians of diverse backgrounds,” the CRTC said.
CRTC Chairperson Vicky Eatrides said the agency’s “decision will help ensure that online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content.” The agency also said that streaming companies “will have some flexibility to direct parts of their contributions to support Canadian television content directly.”
Industry groups blast CRTC
The Motion Picture Association-Canada criticized the CRTC yesterday, saying the fee ruling “reinforces a decades-old regulatory approach designed for cable companies” and is “discriminatory.” The fees “will make it harder for global streamers to collaborate directly with Canadian creatives and invest in world-class storytelling made in Canada for audiences here and around the world,” the lobby group said.
The MPA-Canada said the CRTC didn’t fully consider “the significant contributions streamers make in working directly with Canada’s creative communities.” The group represents streamers including Netflix, Disney Plus, HAYU, Sony’s Crunchyroll, Paramount Plus, and PlutoTV.
“Global studios and streaming services have spent over $6.7 billion annually producing quality content in Canada for local and international audiences and invested more in the content made by Canadian production companies last year than the CBC, or the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm combined,” the group said.
The fees were also criticized by the Digital Media Association, which represents streaming music providers including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify. The “discriminatory tax on music streaming services… is effectively a protectionist subsidy for radio” and may worsen “Canada’s affordability crisis,” the group said.
The Canadian Media Producers Association praised the CRTC decision, saying the decision benefits independent producers and “tilts our industry toward a more level playing field.”
Enlarge/ Comcast/Xfinity’s new bundle of streaming services harkens back to a much earlier era.
Getty Images
Disaggregation is so 2010s, so Comcast, facing intense pressure from streaming services, is bringing back the old bundle-it-up playbook. Its previously announced bundle of Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV+, only to Comcast/Xfinity cable or broadband subscribers, will cost $15 per month. It’s a big discount on paper, but the fine print needs reading.
The “StreamSaver” bundle is considered a “companion to broadband,” Comcast’s CEO David Watson said at a conference today, according to Reuters. It cuts more than 30 percent off the separate price of certain tiers of each service and can be bundled with Comcast’s own “NOW TV,” which has 40 other cable channels streaming. The service is due out May 29 in the US.
Take note that Comcast’s bundle gives you Netflix’s “Standard with ads” plan (which also locks you in at “Full HD” resolution and two devices), Peacock’s “Premium” (which also has ads), and Apple TV+, which has made some recent moves toward an advertising infusion. The things that people liked about streaming—being able to pick and choose TV and movie catalogs, pay to avoid advertisements, and not be beholden to their cable company for entertainment—are effectively countered by StreamSaver. The lines get blurrier, and the prices go up.
If you were already set on paying for the cheapest versions of each service and don’t mind not being able to cancel any one of them once you’re tired of it, $15 is indeed a savings. Doing the math earlier this month, Ars’ Scharon Harding totaled up all three networks at $39.47 per month with no advertising, or $24.97 per month with ads.
Tacking streaming services onto your Comcast subscription would help the company out, as would signing up, especially for StreamSaver. Comcast lost nearly 500,000 cable TV subscribers in Q1 2024, down to 13.6 million subscribers, compared to 16.1 million at the end of 2022. Peacock, the streaming service it owns, has not made money since its 2020 launch and lost $2.7 billion in 2023.
In an ironic twist, cable TV and Internet provider Comcast has announced that it, too, will sell a bundle of video-streaming services for a discounted price. The announcement comes as Comcast has been rapidly losing cable TV subscribers to streaming services and seeks to bring the same type of bundling that originally drew people away from cable to streaming.
Starting on an unspecified date this month, the bundle, called Streamsaver, will offer Peacock, which Comcast owns, Apple TV+, and Netflix to people who subscribe to Comcast’s cable TV and/or broadband. Comcast already offers Netflix or Apple TV+ as add-ons to its cable TV, but Streamsaver expands Comcast’s streaming-related bundling efforts.
Comcast didn’t say how much the streaming bundle would cost, but CEO Brian Roberts said that it will “come at a vastly reduced price to anything in the market today” when announcing the bundle on Tuesday at MoffettNathanson’s 2024 Media, Internet and Communications Conference in New York, per Variety. If we factor in Peacock’s upcoming price hike, subscribing to Apple TV+, Netflix, and Peacock separately would cost $39.47 per month without ads, or $24.97/month with ads.
According to Roberts, Comcast is hoping that the upcoming package will help Comcast “add value to consumers” and “take some of the dollars out of” other streaming businesses.
As Roberts notes: “We’ve been bundling video successfully and creatively for 60 years, and so this is the latest iteration of that.”
Comcast is hemorrhaging subscribers
Last month, Comcast said it lost 487,000 cable TV subscribers in Q1 2024. It ended the quarter with 13,600,000 subscribers, compared to 14,106,000 at the end of 2023 and 16,142,000 at the end of 2022.
Comcast’s broadband subscriber base also decreased from 32,253,000 at the end of 2023 to 32,188,000.
Peacock, Comcast’s flagship streaming service, hasn’t made any money since launching in 2020 and lost $2.7 billion in 2023. However, in April, Comcast said that Peacock’s Q1 losses lessened from $704 million in Q1 2023 to $639 million in Q1 2024.
It’s worth noting that in January, Comcast raised prices for its cable and Internet services by 3 percent, blaming the price hikes on broadband investments and an increase in programming costs.
Déjà vu
One of the common reasons people abandoned cable TV were bundled packages that forced people to pay for services, like phone or Internet, or channels that they didn’t want. Now, Comcast is looking to save its shrinking subscriber base by bundling its cable TV or Internet service with some of its biggest competitors. Like streaming services, Comcast is hoping that bundling its products will deter people from canceling their subscriptions since they’re tied to each other.
Subscriber churn is also a problem in the streaming industry. Antenna, a subscription analyst company, estimates that around 25 percent of video-streaming subscribers in the US have canceled at least three such subscriptions in the last two years. These high-churn subscribers represent around 40 percent of new subscriptions and cancellations last year, Antenna told The New York Times in April.
But Comcast’s announcement hints at déjà vu as Comcast blatantly seeks to re-create the cable bundle or triple-play package using the very streaming services that are eating away at Comcast’s cable business. Ironically, Comcast is seeking to bandage a declining business by feeding some of the biggest contributors to that decline, using the same tactics that drove many customers away in the first place.
We’re expected to hear a lot more about bundled services. Last month, we learned that a Disney+, Hulu, and Max bundle would be released this summer, for example. And there’s already a lengthy list of streaming bundle packages available from third parties like Verizon and T-Mobile.
But for people who left cable to avoid overloaded bundled packages and to get away from companies like Comcast, which group cable TV or Internet with streaming services that often raise prices, limit show and movie availability and features, and increasingly focus on ads, it just isn’t worth the monthly savings.
Streaming services like Netflix and Peacock have already found multiple ways to aggravate paying subscribers this week.
The streaming industry has been heating up. As media giants rush to establish a successful video streaming business, they often make platform changes that test subscribers’ patience and the value of streaming.
Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.
We’ll also examine each streaming platform’s financial status to get an idea of what these companies are thinking (spoiler: They’re thinking about money).
Peacock’s raising prices
For the second time in the past year, NBCUniversal is bumping the price of Peacock, per The Hollywood Reporter (THR) on Monday.
As of July 18, if you try to sign up for Peacock Premium (which has ads), it’ll cost $7.99 per month, up from $5.99/month today. Premium Plus, (which doesn’t have ads), will go up from $11.99/month to $13.99/month. Annual subscription pricing for the ad plan is increasing 33.3 percent from $59.99 to $79.99, and the ad-free annual plan’s price will rise 16.7 percent from $119.99/year to $139.99/year.
Those already subscribed to Peacock won’t see the changes until August 17, six days after the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will stream on Peacock.
The pricing changes will begin eight days before the Olympics’ opening ceremony. That means that in the days leading up to the sporting event, signing up for Peacock will cost more than ever. That said, there’s still time to sign up Peacock for its current pricing.
As noted by THR, the changes come as NBCUniversal may feel more confident about its streaming service, which now includes big-ticket items, like exclusive NFL games and Oppenheimer(which Peacock streamed exclusively for a time),in addition to new features for the Olympics, like multiview.
Some outspoken subscribers, though, aren’t placated.
“Just when I was starting to like the service,” Reddit user MarkB1997 said in response to the news. “I’ll echo what everyone has been saying for a while now, but these services are pricing themselves out of the market.”
Peacock subscribers already experienced a price increase on August 17, 2023. At the time, Peacock’s Premium pricing went from $4.99/month to $5.99/month, and the Premium Plus tier from $9.99/month to $11.99/month.
Peacock’s pockets
Peacock’s price bumps appear to be a way for the younger streaming service to inch closer to profitability amid a major, quadrennial, global event.
NBCUniversal parent company Comcast released its Q1 2024 earnings report last week, showing that Peacock, which launched in July 2020, remains unprofitable. For the quarter, Peacock lost $639 million, compared to $825 million in Q4 2023 and $704 million in Q1 2023. Losses were largely attributed to higher programming costs.
Peacock’s paid subscriber count is lower than some of its rivals. The platform ended the quarter with 34 million paid users, up from 31 million at the end of 2023. Revenue also rose, with the platform pulling in $1.1 billion, representing a 54 percent boost compared to the prior year.
Sony bumps Crunchyroll prices weeks after shuttering Funimation
Today, Sony’s anime streaming service Crunchyroll announced that it’s increasing subscription prices as follows:
The Mega Fan Tier, which allows streaming on up to four devices simultaneously, will go from $9.99/month to $11.99/month
The Ultimate Fan Tier, which allows streaming on up to six devices simultaneously, will go from $14.99/month to $15.99/month
Crunchyroll’s cheapest plan ($7.99/month) remains unchanged. None of Crunchyroll’s subscription plans have ads. Crunchyroll’s also adding discounts to its store for each subscription tier, but this is no solace for those who don’t shop there on a monthly basis or at all.
The news of higher prices comes about a month after Sony shuttered Funimation, an anime streaming service it acquired in 2017. After buying Crunchyroll in 2021, Funimation was somewhat redundant for Sony. And now that Sony has converted all remaining Funimation accounts into Crunchyroll accounts (while deleting Funimation digital libraries), it’s forcing many customers to pay more to watch their favorite anime.
A user going by BioMountain on Crunchyroll said the news is “not great,” since they weren’t “a big fan of having to switch from Funimation to begin with, especially since that app was so much better” than Crunchyroll.
Interestingly, when Anime News Network asked on February 29 whether Crunchyroll would see prices rise over the next two years, the company told the publication that predicting a price change for that time frame would be improbable.
Crunching numbers
Crunchyroll had 5 million paid subscribers in 2021 but touted over 13 million in January, (plus over 89 million unpaid users, per Bloomberg). Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini has said that Crunchyroll is profitable, but not by how much.
In 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated that Crunchyroll would represent 36 percent of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s profit by 2028, compared to about 1 percent in March.
However, Purini has shown interest in growing the company further and noted to Variety in February an increase in “general entertainment” companies getting into anime.
Still, anime remains a more niche entertainment category, and Crunchyroll is more specialized than some other streaming platforms. With Sony making it so that anime fans have one less streaming service option and jacking up the prices for one of the limited options, it’s showing that it wants as much of the $20 billion anime market as possible.
Crunchyroll claimed today that its pricing changes are tied to “investment in more anime, additional services like music and games, and additional subscriber benefits.”
Enlarge/ Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) are the Dead Boy Detectives, ghosts who solve paranormal mysteries.
Netflix
For those eagerly anticipating the second season of Netflix’s stellar adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels, Dead Boy Detectives—the streaming plaform’s new supernatural horror detective series—is a welcome return to that weird magical world. Co-showrunner Steve Yockey (Supernatural), who created the series, aptly describes it as “the Hardy Boys on acid.” You’ve got vengeful witches, demons, psychic mediums, cursed masks, foul-mouthed parasitic sprites, talking cats—and, of course, the titular ghostly detectives, intent on spending their afterlife cracking all manner of mysterious paranormal cases.
(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)
Sandman fans first encountered the Dead Boys in the “Seasons of Mist” storyline, in which the ghost Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland meet for the first time in 1990. Edwin had been murdered at his boarding school in 1916 and spent decades in Hell. When Lucifer abandoned his domain, Hell was emptied, and Edwin was among the souls who returned to that boarding school. Charles was a living student whom Edwin tried to protect. Charles ultimately died and chose to join Edwin in his afterlife adventures. The characters reappeared in the Children’s Crusade crossover series, in which they decided to become detectives.
“As far as I was concerned, this was obviously the ultimate, the finest, most commercial idea I had ever had: two dead boys and a detective agency, you’re there,” said Gaiman during a virtual media event. “Nobody else saw it. It was just this mad conviction that sooner or later, there would be somebody out there in the world who would pick up one of these comics, read it, and see the same thing. Little did I know that baby Steve Yockey was out there waiting to be infected.”
Yockey championed the project from the start. “I fell in love with the comic when I was very young and I was going through a personal loss, and I found it weirdly comforting in a psychedelic way,” he said. It’s thanks to Yockey that the Dead Boys popped up in a S3 episode of Doom Patrol when he was a writer on that series. The characters proved so popular that HBO Max ordered a pilot for a Dead Boy Detectives series in 2021. The project subsequently moved to Netflix. Per the official premise:
Meet Edwin Paine (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), “the brains” and “the brawn” behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends, ghosts… who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together—including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.
“I knew the things I wanted to hang onto in the adaptation were the relationship between the boys and Death, because that drives our action, and also this sense of, don’t wait until you’re looking death in the face to start living,” said Yockey. For his co-showrunner, Beth Schwartz, it was the close friendship between Edwin and Charles, forged out of their painful pasts, that cemented her love for the series. “It’s this horrible tragedy when you really think about it,” she said. “It’s these two boys who didn’t get to live past their teenage years. But because of that tragedy they created this amazing friendship.”
The Dead Boys came out of the Sandman canon, but that series was at Netflix, while Yockey was initially developing Dead Boy Detectives for HBO Max, So Gaiman and Yockey essentially “filed off the Sandman serial numbers” for their early scripts, per Gaiman. When the series moved to Netflix, the streaming platform’s only request was to set the story back in the Sandman universe. Charles and Edwin are evading Death to solve mysteries in their afterlife, so naturally, Kirby Howell-Baptiste makes a cameo in a pilot scene penned by Gaiman, reprising her role as Death. One other Endless makes an appearance late in the season, and eagle-eyed fans might spot nods to the original Sandman artwork in the set design.
Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing helped the streaming service blow past Wall Street’s earnings forecasts, but its shares fell after it said it planned to stop regularly disclosing its subscriber numbers.
The company’s operating income surged 54 percent in the first quarter as it added 9.3 million subscribers worldwide, proving that the efforts to reduce password sharing it launched last year have had more lasting benefits than some investors expected.
However, Netflix said on Thursday that from next year it would stop revealing its total number of subscribers, a metric that has been a crucial benchmark for investors in the streaming era.
In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said it was shifting its focus to engagement—the amount of time its subscribers spend on the service—while also developing new price points and sources of revenue, including advertising.
“Each incremental member has a different business impact” with the new subscription plans, Greg Peters, co-chief executive, said in a call with investors. “And that means the historical simple math that we all did—the number of members times the monthly price—is increasingly less accurate in capturing the state of the business.”
He added that Netflix would “periodically update” on subscriber figures when it hits “major milestones.”
Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP Foresight, said Netflix’s decision to no longer disclose quarterly subscriptions starting in 2025 “will not go down well.”
“No matter the company’s attempt to switch focus from subscribers to financials, net [subscriber] adds is the key metric everyone wants to see,” he said.
The latest results showed there was still room for growth as a result of its password crackdown and push into advertising, Pescatore added. Netflix said memberships to its advertising-supported tier rose 65 percent from the previous quarter.
Before Thursday’s report the streaming pioneer’s shares had risen 30 percent this year, significantly outperforming the broader market. The shares fell 4.7 percent in after-hours trading following the earnings report.
Netflix executives said among their primary goals was improving the variety and quality of their entertainment, including television shows, movies, and games. It recently appointed Dan Lin as the new head of its film division.
“Even though we have made and we are making great films, we want to make them better,” said Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive. He added that he saw no need to spend more money on content.
Netflix has been pushing further into sports-related content, including a $5 billion deal to livestream World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship Raw program in the US over the next decade.
It is also offering a livestream of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul in July, leading analysts to question whether the company plans to move further into live sport. “We’re not anti-sports, but pro-profitable growth,” Sarandos said.
Netflix reported earnings of $5.28 a share, well ahead of Wall Street forecasts of $4.51, while its number of subscribers rose 16 percent to 269 million from a year earlier.
Its revenue forecast for the current quarter of $9.49 billion was slightly below Wall Street forecasts of about $9.5 billion. But Netflix said it expected revenue to grow between 13 and 15 percent for the full year.
The company said it generated strong engagement in the first quarter from subscribers in the UK with Fool Me Once, which had 98 million views. Other standouts included the drama series Griselda with 66.4 million views and 3 Body Problem with about 40 million.
