Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey Series ‘House Of Cards’ – Deadline.com

Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey Series ‘House Of Cards’

Submitter wrote:

"I missed this one. Netflix is going into Original Programming, and it is jumping in with both feet. House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey. (You read that right, Kevin is going from movies to, not quite TV). And Netflix paid big for it, $100,000,000. Beating out HBO.

It's an interesting but, I guess, necessary gamble on Netflix's part.

• On the one hand, owning content in estate fee simple, removes some problems instantly. It is very frustrating for their streaming customers to have a show on demand one day and then gone for little apparent reason the next.
  
  
• On the downside, Netflix is now a competitor with ... well, everybody really. For a while, everyone was willing to cut their own throats to deal with Netflix because, with the death of the DVD market, they were the only guys with an open checkbook. However, in switching from purveyor to provider, Netflix turns every hand against them.
  
  HBO, is no loss for Netflix. They won't let them stream Tales from the Crypt reruns, let alone Boardwalk Empire. But Showtime has clamped down like a vice and even Starz which was Netflix's closest partner is suddenly putting their original content on a 90-day hold. So there is the problem for Netflix.
  

Netflix might just be big enough at this point to survive the transition ... except for one thing. It needs to be successful, and an American version of House of Cards will need a broad base of viewership to be successful. The British original was written by British Tories who saw the leadership of the Conservative party being hijacked by soft-shell fascists. Primeminister Frances Urquet was really just as much an enemy of the right wing as he was of the left. Right now it could ring very true, a ruthless Neocon Whip overthrows a weak Speaker of the House and then dethrones a good but naive president, taking the top slot for himself, but in so doing betraying every single conservative ideal. Do you really think Fincher and Spacey can deliver something like that? Casino Jack argues otherwise."