Platform Checkup: Netflix
For the last few weeks, we’ve uncovered some interesting films to watch by establishing a general theme and then analyzing where those titles are available across the marketplace. The feedback has been great and has been helpful for me to find the right amount of options for each week’s list.
Check out this week’s menu right here.
This week we’re switching things up and looking at it from the other direction; by singling out a specific platform and then determining the best (statistically speaking of course) movies to watch there.
While a dart-board approach to select the first platform would have been fun, seeing this image this week inspired me to turn our sights on everyone’s favorite streaming stalwart; Netflix.
I also wanted to start with this selection since it’s a safer bet more people have a Netflix subscription versus some of the other niche platforms that have appeared on some of our lists.
The ubiquity of the service is something to behold. Commanding nearly 200 million worldwide subscribers, a subscription to Netflix has achieved “utility expense” expense status for most households (Cable, gas, power, Netflix). While the next few years will be interesting to watch as costs and subscription prices rise, the platform is certainly in rarefied air.
The evolution of Netflix as a company over a relatively short period of time is quite fascinating. For anyone interested, I highly recommend co-founder Marc Randolph’s book That Will Never Work. It’s a very informative glimpse into the early days of the company and an inspirational story for anyone endeavoring to innovate regardless of what industry you’re in.
Ok, enough praise. Let’s run Netflix through our statistical gauntlet and see what comes out.
First of all, some high-level insights. As it stands today (literally, as this can change daily), Netflix has 3,702 available films.
Impressively, 77.6% of that slate is only available to stream on Netflix. 35.6% of the library is available to rent or buy on other platforms. These two numbers together reflect the service’s formidable hold on exclusive content.
On Netflix in the US, here is the breakdown of the top five countries of origin for their film library:
USA - 50.84%
INDIA - 17.32%
UK - 8.65%
CANADA - 5.20%
FRANCE - 4.78%
In terms of the age of their film library, the proportion looks like this:
Clearly, there is a high priority on more contemporary films. The fact that Netflix is so aggressive in producing their own content also underlies this metric. It will be interesting to compare this against others in future platform checkups.
Together, all the films on Netflix average a 62% blended score (IMDB, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes). 16.3% of the titles hold a blended score of over 75%.
Now let’s apply some filtering to sift out the statistical standouts in the Netflix library. We’re going to do this by applying 5 tests to each title.
Has the film been nominated for an Oscar?
Has the film won an Oscar?
Does the film hold a blended score of over 75%?
Does the film appear on any of these lists: IMDB top 1000, Metacritic top 1000, Rotten Tomatoes Top 100?
Has the film been selected for the National Film Registry?
Here is the scorecard when we put all of Netflix’s films through that battery of tests.
521 — pass at least one
97 — pass two
32 — pass three
8 — pass four
No film hits all five criteria. The 40 titles that achieve three or four will be the basis for this week’s menu.
Of this list of movies, 30 of them are only available to stream on Netflix (though many also have purchase and rental options on other platforms).
A tip of the hat to Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson who each have 2 films on this menu. And another to Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio who each star in 3 on the list.
There are obviously myriad combinations of tests we could apply that would result in different views of a given library. This is probably the most obvious as it’s meant to spotlight what could be considered as the most critically successful movies. However, soon we’ll be testing other methods with different objectives that should return more dynamic lists of perhaps less familiar films.
For now there seem to be some good ones on this menu. Enjoy your exploration!