I think what we're discovering is that movies, as a medium, are for narratives that can be told in under 3 hours. If your narrative requires longer, or you just want to be able to have more time to develop characters or worlds, it's better to create a show.
Another effect we seem to be seeing is that streaming seems less inclined to grind out endless seasons of a show until even most of its fans just can't bring themselves to watch any longer. I expect the economics of streaming favor freshness rather than milking a cash cow through a decline when it's got little chance of bringing in fresh viewers.
(Which I think is mostly a good thing while recognizing there have been good series that took a season or more to really find their rhythm and voice.)
it's an interesting reversal of the trend. back in the '00s, it seemed like even the best tv shows had a pretty scrappy first season: obviously low budget, little chemistry in the talent. if a show managed to get enough viewers in the first season, it would get a larger budget and hit its stride in the second one. nowadays it seems to be the opposite; most shows seem to give it all they have in a strong first season, then start phoning it in for the next couple, then getting culled without remorse when the viewership drops. I'm curious whether there's an economic reason for this, or if it's all in my head.
BROADCAST: Pay for pilots. Pick up some of them. You know a good chunk of shows won't make it past S1. Some won't make it that far. But, especially pre-reality show, you still have a schedule to fill with scripted TV. So you throw a bunch of mostly economical stuff at the wall and see what sticks. The stuff that does, you pick up and groom it.
STREAMING: Same deal with pilots. But now your main objective is to find that hit which will net you a bunch of new subscribers. Yeah, you need filler too but that's not as big a deal. So you're probably incentivized to do more swinging at the fences. And you probably don't care about having as many slow burn series because it's all about how many new subscribers you can sign on and, especially with serialized TV (which streaming/internet has also helped enable), if you don't grab people up-front, it's probably a waste.
I'm reading Dune now (no spoilers please!) and I'm really surprised they're making a movie rather than a miniseries.
Publicity seems to be keeping rather quiet about this, for obvious reasons.
There’s character development, and then gratuitous time wastage. At least we can skip past it nowadays, or just opt out of watching it.
Pendulums swing from one extreme to the other, as always.
[ EDIT: d'oh, I meant to write this in reverse, as "fluff padding is much less bad than .... oh well. ]
I prefer stories to be told that already have a beginning, middle and end at their outset, not just some fingers-crossed "we might get 5 seasons, we can decide how it unfolds once we get to season 3" stuff that has dominated way too much TV.
Granted, the purely episodic shows (e.g. Star Trek, LA Law and the like) are immune to this, mostly.
But give me more True Detective, where the story ending is known before they even start filming, and the only question is "do we get to try another story?"
You're kind of close. They would fluff the seasons to get the episode count to 100 as soon as possible. 100 episodes was the magic number to qualifying for syndication. Syndication is where the money used to be made on content. Ask Jerry Seinfeild or the cast from Friends. Syndication is no longer the holy grail. You are making your content for the syndication platforms from the beginning now. This has allowed for the freedom to use enough episodes to tell your story correctly, and then getting out of the way. No more bottle episodes.
I got burned once by Lost when I was much younger, and hope to not make that mistake again.
I might not have been the target audience though. People often go nuts for JJ Abrams and I’ve honestly hated almost everything of his I’ve watched. So I’m likely just not the kind of person he is targeting.
But maybe it was because I was young, and the format was new to me, but the first season did capture my interest.
Battlestar Galactica on the other hand? Cylons had a plan my ass.
That is still a holdover from television: predictable equally-time episodes. Why should each episode be of identical length? Why not free the production to tell each episode in a different time. An even more free form would be, for example, 16-hour non-episodic movie where the viewer is left to decide when to take breaks.
And if you release something all together in 16 hours it became harder to go back to where you stopped, in case the software glitches, harder to comment with friends, which maybe would create less hype, and maybe even create a mental barrier, like, "omg, this is 16 hours long in one go!"
And how are you even supposed to know when you should take a break while watching it for the first time?
I loved it! Now that I can only watch adult movies after the kids go to bed, I had to watch the original "The Hateful Eight" over two nights.
The miniseries was much easier to watch, and didn't require compromises for running length.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/27/quentin-taranti...
Just invite them in telling them that it's educational, and they will run away and not go near your TV room.
I would argue the "Snyder cut" of Justice League might be a better example, but that's also an extremely weird and bespoke situation. That is actually being released as a 4-episode mini-series. Even though HBO has budgeted $70M for additional shooting and production, presumably most of the cut will use what Snyder shot back in 2017. I'm unclear how much he shot back then was then cut when Joss Whedon took over. Snyder being who he is probably had wanted to do a 3+ hour movie for the original release, and may have actually shot most of those scenes.
Dune is a good example. Dune has for decades been viewed as the quintessential impossible story to ever put on screen. It was done best as a miniseries, and even then it wasn't complete. But an open-ended streaming option not subject to theatre/TV time or content constraints? There is potential for very interesting content.