While we’re now swimming through a sea of streaming options, it’s Netflix and Amazon who are squaring off in a Marvel versus DC sized battle. Unfairly or not, the two companies have been pitched as adversaries in the streaming arena. On one side you have Netflix, who believe the currently theatrical distributional model doesn’t serve the needs of today’s moviegoers, and who have billions of dollars to spend in acquiring and developing original content. On the other side is Amazon, who always release their original films in cinemas first before it’s on Amazon Prime, and have attracted some very cinephile friendly names to their roster (Park Chan-Wook, Nicolas Winding Refn, Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, and more). But at the end of the day, it’s all about quality, and Netflix chief Ted Sarandos believes his company has one advantage over many of their competitors, including Amazon.
“Netflix is a one-click-cancel business,” he said at a conference at USC over the weekend (via THR). “If everyone had that kind of accountability to their consumers, content would be better.”
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Unlike Amazon, which requires a yearly subscription to Amazon Prime to access their content, Netflix is still a month-by-month business, wholly dependent on their users to stay customers. And Sarandos believes Netflix’s sole focus on movies and television (he also adds that will remain the only thing they’re in business doing) ensures their continued health.
“I think maybe they’re betting that video is a better way to sell Prime than other things,” he said. “It’s such a foreign concept to us because we’re so hyper-focused. We do nothing but sell the Netflix subscription. If we were shipping diapers, I don’t know that we’d have been as successful.”
It’s a bit of side-eye to Amazon, but an argument with some merit. That said, Amazon has some really seasoned industry veterans among their staff, and the talent they’ve managed to land, speaks to the clout they carry. But the flips is if the costly movie business doesn’t wind up showing an ROI in Amazon Prime subscriptions, it would very easy for Jeff Bezos to yank the cord on creating original movie and television content, and try something else. So in that sense, there is a certain tenuousness to the Amazon model. And to repeat what Sarandos, movies and TV is all Netflix does.
Thoughts? Let us know below.