There's talk of replacing Henry Cavill with another actor if they do a season 3 of Witcher. That would pretty much guarantee cancellation. Maybe that's the point. Netflix hates big budget shows and keeping anything beyond 3 seasons.
I just finished watching an AppleTV show Defending Jacob, which for the most part was pretty good legal drama with the exception of a silly Hollywood writing concept they introduced. I'd give it maybe 7/10 brought down slightly by the dumb concept they wanted to make central to the plot. Everything else was pretty solid.
Replacing Cavill would be a disaster for The Witcher. They need to keep their Geralt, Yennifer (the biggest surprise to me; she may have been the best of the cast in S1), and Dandelion.
I think he's making $3.2 million a season and they probably don't want to spend that much. Looks like Triss's hair is getting closer to red.
Most of the female viewership is only watching because he's in it. He's king of the hunks right now. If they get rid of him that will be the end of the show.
It's funny because he's a self proclaimed fantasy geek and PC gamer. He tried out for the part because he loved the Witcher 3 game so much. He missed the first call for the role of Superman because he was running a WoW raid, and there was recently some fan rage because someone made fun of him for collecting Warhammer miniatures.
I think there is a battle between "FAANG / tech money" media and traditional media. That salary is trivial for a name brand star like Henry Cavill but I think they have bigger plans. The tech companies show up and splash a lot of money around, but don't actually make (or even care to make) money the traditional way. They just need content to fill their platforms and all have alternative revenue streams. They are going to commoditize Hollywood and have already been very successful . The concept of movie stars, big directors, producers will fade away. Name recognition won't be a thing and every player will be a commoidty.
That's clearly the goal, but I don't think they've been successful at all and we can see that now that they are disclosing the viewership numbers. Red Notice is a perfect example. The movie was absolute garbage but it has been number 1 for weeks because it has so much star power. Take a look at this list. Nearly all of their big hits had some combination of a big star, a big director, and/or a big budget. They make a lot of generic filler content, but people mostly don't watch it. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-...shows-and-movies-ranked-according-to-netflix/ They want to subvert the Hollywood model but they've fallen right back into it. It reminds me of how TV networks got tired of paying for expensive scripted shows with big stars like Jerry Seinfeld and the cast of Friends in the 80s and 90s and tried to push cheap reality TV in the early to mid 2000s. People quickly lost interest and scripted shows came back bigger than ever in the late 2000s and 2010s with shows like Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Dexter, etc and have stayed that way ever since. Reality TV is now mostly relegated to garbage cable networks hardly anyone watches like Bravo and TLC. And ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC screwed themselves in the long run with that reality junk. They weren't prepared for the return of scripted TV and have had few hits in the last decade or so and got slaughtered by AMC, HBO, and streaming platforms. Netflix can pump out junk, but that doesn't mean people will watch it. And if they only put out junk they will end up just like the networks that pushed reality TV 20 years ago.
Reality TV didn't go away, it just failed on those media platforms. Youtube, and to some degree Tik Tok, sucked up 90% of that market. Maybe it more accurate to say that Netflix wants to kill Hollywood so they can become Hollywood. Hollywood is dead, long live Hollywood!
I've finished the first two seasons of Servant on AppleTV+ from M. Night Shyamalan, and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's been a long time since The Sixth Sense, and I'm glad to see him finally create something else really worth watching. It's dark and peculiar, technically impressive, and has a great cast. The third season begins next month, which I'll be watching. I'd give it around 8/10, maybe even higher down the road if the entire series maintains quality and has a decent conclusion. It has already been given the green light for all four seasons; Shyamalan originally planned around 40 episodes. This gives it a very decent chance to actually maintain pretty good quality (good shows can be ruined by studio meddling or early cancellation; almost impossible to maintain consistent quality and have a proper conclusion when that happens) and end properly assuming this guy can stick the landing. BTW, the young actress from Game of Thrones who played Myrcella Baratheon is fantastic in this. I can't really elaborate on most things because it's a show that's very sensitive to spoilers, but she has an impressive range for such a young actor.
Maintains quality. Sticks the landing. Yeah I don't know dude. Other than Sixth Sense, M Night is pretty infamous for ruining otherwise good stuff with ridiculous twists and terrible endings.
I agree. That is my main concern. But I'm starting to wonder if a series is a much better format for him. His movies led you to believe certain things up until the last few minutes then ended in with a crucial twist. The entire movie was contingent on the big twist being amazing. It worked quite well in The Sixth Sense but not so much with the rest of his movies. This series, on the other hand, gives him well over 20x the time to develop characters and plot, and the casting directors really did an exceptional job. As I mentioned Nell Tiger Free in the picture above is fantastic, and I'll also mention Rupert Grint is great as the brother of one of the main characters and an irritable degenerate struggling addict that is a nice contrast to this Ron Weasley image from Harry Potter. Each character has their own history of many secrets and lies that have been gradually revealed over time rather than one big twist at the end, which I think is working much better for M. Night so far. There are are many nice subtle touches such as Laruen Ambrose intentionally doing stilted, wooden acting on her corny local news anchor segments. The level of detail and nuances and amount of character development gives me a lot more optimism than I've felt for any of his post-Sixth Sense movies. I think it might be more creepy and dark than any of his movies, too, which definitely suits my tastes.
I think it's incredibly unfair that people without an Amazon Prime Video subscription could be deprived of the most extraordinary empowered womyn pregnant wafish daywalker girls get it done patriarchy-busting scene in the amazing Wheel of Gender Studies series, so I thought I'd bless the non-subscribers with this gem: Merry Christmas.
Finished season 2 of the Witcher. Here’s hoping Netflix doesn’t cock this up because I’m digging it. Plus the teaser for the spin off with Michelle Yeoh got me feeling some kind of way. Might even read the books. And yeah, merry Xmas fellows.
Finished Season 2 of Harley Quinn. It's it's good but not great. I probably wont bother watching a season 3. Started Season 5 of the Expanse. It's still a solid show. Not a must watch or anything but I usually watch it while I eat my lunch. Masters of the Universe: Revelation Part 2. As a fan, I say it's still good, but the Fisto joke might have been a bit much.
I finished the second season of The Witcher over the holidays. I'm still finding it to be pretty enjoyable, and my fears that Freya Allan (actress who plays Ciri) might be too fragile appear to be unfounded. She said that she likes the physicality and expected to do more of that in the previous season and also expressed admiration for Cavill's dedication to the stunts and swordplay. Ciri and the witchers need to be played by reasonably feisty and tough actors for it to work in the show.
Season 6 of the Expanse Season 4 of Cobra Kai The Expanse is still a really good show. It hasn't returned to the level it was at during its peak during seasons 2 and 3, but it hasn't gotten bad either. It's well written, the characters are likeable and there's plenty of action. I wish there was more of it. It will be ending in two episodes. From what I've read the books have a huge leap forward in time after this. So it's a natural place to end it. The other books will need a new series.
@cmdrmonkey From what I've been reading the series' version of Drummer was continuously expanded and included components from other omitted smaller characters from the source materials mainly due to how impressed they continued to be with Cara Gee's performance. Cara Gee's Drummer ended up being one of the central characters by the end of the series based on merit of her work, which is pretty awesome.
The ending of the Expanse doesn't disappoint. It's worth watching through to the end. I hope they make a spinoff series about the Laconian Empire.