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Daniel Craig in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Agatha Christie for the Instagram Generation
Photo: John Wilson / Netflix
The corks are popping at Netflix, and there is a hangover at ARD.
Both TV providers went on the Christmas offensive with similar products: while the streaming service had the glossy, souped-up Instagram version of an Agatha Christie murder mystery (influencers and tech billionaires included) with »Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery« , the public broadcaster group tried to rock its audience with a sense of coma dimmed retro crime thrillers from the Christmas weekend (including country gentry snorkeling and whiskers).
The calculation apparently worked for Netflix: “Glass Onion” is now number one of the most streamed Netflix offers – directly followed by the previous film “Knives Out”, which was released in 2019.
The "crime scene" in the first only had 4.09 million viewers - according to the industry service DWDL, the worst rate in over 15 years.
Netflix does not publish any concrete figures, but the ARD ratings debacle in the crime classic, which is actually indestructible in the public's favour, suggests that many ARD couch potatoes actually migrated to Netflix on Christmas weekend.
»New Novel« or Aufguss?
Someone who played a key role in this success can only be happy about it to a limited extent: »Glass Onion« director Rian Johnson has just vented his anger at his financier Netflix in an interview with »The Atlantic«.
In the debate magazine, the filmmaker described himself as "pissed off" because the managers of the streaming service had insisted that the sales-boosting appendix "A Knives Out Mystery" had to be added to the actual title.
The film is a crime thriller in its own right, »a new novel«, only Daniel Craig appears again in his detective role from the previous film.
Everything else has been completely rethought.
Behind the artist's outburst of anger lies more than offended vanity.
Because the title cursed by Johnson points to a greater strategic orientation of the streaming service, which has reached the end of its expansion course after years of massive growth.
After the global surprise success of "Knives Out" in cinemas in 2019 and the subsequent exploitation on Netflix, the US platform is said to have put an impressive 400 million dollars on the table for two sequels, according to industry insiders.
This is also a measure against competing streaming companies that have significantly more capital and franchise productions.
While Netflix had its last global mega hit with the series »Stranger Things«, Amazon Prime recently invested a record budget in the series continuation of the »Lord of the Rings« saga.
Disney+, in turn, can flood the market with Marvel epics and "Avatar" sequels into the next decade.
And the Paramount+ service, which has just been launched in Germany, has the trademark rights to »Star Trek«, which also guarantees it streaming blockbusters.
Because Netflix can hardly defy the franchise supremacy with its own big-budget series and trademark rights, it now has to rely on developing its own franchise formats with relatively small film productions that will keep the audience engaged for years.
It is therefore very likely that more films will be inflated into series after »Knives Out«.
The double top placement of the unequal »Knives Out« double in Netflix's own charts seems to prove this strategy right, at least in the short term.
It is doubtful whether the branding, which the creator himself has criticized, can keep the audience in the long term.
It sounds paradoxical in view of the ARD ratings debacle on Boxing Day, but basically Netflix needs a different kind of long-running hit to offer the Marvel-Tolkien-Star Trek empires of Amazon, Disney and Co. Defy: a kind of global » Crime scene".