Netflix and not-so chill: How streamers shape South Africa’s film industry

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Charlie Brooker’s latest offering takes aim at the very platform his anthology series Black Mirror has called home since 2016: Netflix. 

In the dystopian universe created by Brooker, Netflix finds its avatar in Streamberry — a subscription service that is unabashed in its exploitation of its subject matter, and the people behind it, all in the name of feeding a voracious content machine.

Black Mirror’s popularity lies in its ability to reflect back to us the worst of a world in which tech giants are gods, usually in a way that is perversely prescient. Brooker’s contribution to the Netflix debate is particularly timely, given the writers’ strike in Hollywood, which has the streamer in its crosshairs.

As Brooker’s lampooning and the writers’ walkout suggest, the relationship between creators and streaming companies is a complicated one. 

On the one hand, these companies have contributed to the slow death of the film and television industry as we know it, forcing it to adapt or die — often to the detriment of the people behind the scenes. 

On the other, it has given some filmmakers the opportunity to spread their wings, otherwise clipped by Hollywood’s primacy.

Short-circuited

In a happy turn of events, Cape Town-based Gambit Films was able to drop its first season of Blood & Water during the thick of the pandemic. The teen drama series shot up into the Netflix top 10 most-watched list in eight countries. Seasons two and three beat the records set in 2020, also featuring on the global top 10 list.

“When Covid hit us, everything came to a standstill. But where we were in the flow of things — we had just launched season one and, after 10 days on the service, they then commissioned season two — was fortuitous,” said Gambit’s executive producer Bradley Joshua.

“It was fortuitous, because everyone was at home. Nobody could do anything.”

While the pandemic spelled the worst for many in the industry, streaming companies capitalised on the lockdown-induced demand for at-home entertainment. Netflix’s subscriber numbers soared, with 26 million added in the first half of 2020 — seeing it beat earlier growth predictions.

By then, the American company had already gained a foothold in the South African market, having launched in the country in 2016. Netflix has since invested in more than 170 licensed titles and has commissioned 16 Netflix Original South African series.

Gambit’s courtship with Netflix didn’t stop with Blood & Water. Earlier this year, the streaming site premiered Unseen, a six-part thriller with a domestic worker as its unlikely protagonist.

According to Joshua, the advent of streaming sites has changed the local film industry dramatically. 

“When we started this business in 2010, we had ambitions to produce so-called Hollywood blockbusters both in film and television. 

“That was the ambition but we realised that we were not going to go straight there … What the likes of Netflix have done is that they have kind of short-circuited that.”

What Netflix wants

Joshua compares the reception of Gambit’s earlier release, a feature-length thriller titled Nommer 37, to Blood & Water. Though the former was sold internationally, it didn’t have nearly the same commercial success as the latter. 

“That is the shift for me. Netflix’s model, whether it was intended or inadvertent, kind of changed people’s viewing patterns, changed people’s viewing appetites.”

Casting back to 2014, when he attended the Cannes Film Festival as part of a department of trade and industry-sponsored delegation of black filmmakers, Joshua said: “In the eyes of sales agents at the time, people were looking for different things to what we were trying to do. 

“We were trying to do content with people with black faces and hoping that content was going to travel … So, if you look back a decade, what you were told the world was looking for was very different to what we know the world is consuming now.”

Today, according to Joshua, Gambit’s order book is dominated by Netflix — creating a dynamic that has changed the way the production company goes about its work. 

Gambit has three writer-directors who are developing their own projects, which will be sold to interested platforms. The company also focuses on projects specifically for Netflix. 

“Netflix sometimes comes to us and says, ‘Hey, we really want a film like this.’ And then we go sit around with our creatives and go, ‘Right, Netflix wants something like this,’” Joshua said.

“We fork out a few ideas and sometimes we land on something and we do it … What we have done, as a business, is we’re starting to see ourselves becoming a film and television studio.”

Tastemakers

Although Gambit has landed in a sweet spot with Netflix, not everyone is convinced that streaming sites have the best interests of the industry at heart.

One veteran filmmaker, who preferred not to be named, suggested that — despite the positives that have come with them — streaming companies’ pursuit of crowd-pleasing content could end up stifling independent film. 

Adding to this dilemma is the huge amount of sway streamers hold, especially over traditional broadcasters, such as the SABC.

The SABC has struggled to survive amid the incursion of streamers and some have criticised South African regulators for having not quite got a handle on the impact of these multinationals on the domestic market. 

Last May, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa opted to extend its inquiry into subscription broadcasting services, citing rapid changes to the market.

Meanwhile, in the wake of more competition, the SABC has had to continue to deliver on its unfunded public mandate — despite some of this content not necessarily attracting as wide an audience. The public broadcaster’s audience rating slipped more than 50% between March 2018 and March last year, hitting advertising revenue.

“Streamers were a lifeline for South African creators … There are some strong African commissioning editors on board who have the interests of filmmakers at heart. But they don’t have a public mandate,” the filmmaker noted in an interview with the Mail & Guardian.

“They are trying to grow their viewership. Because it’s so competitive, they are commissioning stuff that they know has guaranteed audiences. It’s not pushing the envelope. It’s not artistically unusual. It’s very much about trying to get audiences in.”

Cait Pansegrouw, who heads development and production of all Urucu films, said it can be difficult for independent films to pierce through the sheer amount of content pushed out by streaming sites. 

Pansegrouw worked on the critically acclaimed Inxeba (The Wound), released in 2017, as well as This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection.

“The algorithms don’t just respond to our taste. They also shape and influence them … It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by choice and to just be led by the algorithm,” she said.

“Our tastes can’t grow if we are constantly watching the same type of content. I don’t think people know they want something different until they are exposed to it. 

“Films that would be called ‘challenging’ or ‘difficult’ or ‘weird’ — as independent or arthouse films often are. It’s very difficult to cut through the noise. So, there is seemingly less demand for these films, which is scary for independent filmmakers.”

Best and worst of times

Streamers also hold a contentious position as far as royalties are concerned, something that has played out in the writers’ strike overseas. 

If Netflix commissions an original, 100% of that intellectual property belongs to the company and creators do not earn any residuals.

During public hearings in March, both Netflix and Amazon pushed back on royalty obligations set out in amendments to the Copyright Bill and the Performers Protection Bill. 

Royalty obligations, Netflix said in its presentation, could be detrimental to creators, restricting the upfront lump-sum payments they depend on. 

The royalty model, Netflix added, poses a challenge for video-on-demand services, which do not monetise individual titles, but rather earn revenue through subscription fees.

The amendments also prevent certain creators from licensing or assigning their rights for longer than 25 years. This, Amazon said, would reduce incentives for producers to invest in local content. 

In a country with low economic growth and an ultra-high unemployment rate, the willingness of streaming companies to invest is good ammunition in the battle over regulations.

Reflecting on the writers’ strike and the treatment of creators, Pansegrouw said: “When I think back to Covid, there was a strong feeling that the pandemic confirmed what many in the industry suspected — those who hold power don’t care about the arts, despite the fact that we were all consuming it in some shape or form during the lockdown.”

The issues around residuals and artificial intelligence raised by the striking writers are emotionally triggering for creators because of the pandemic’s hard truths, she added. 

“We all know the streamers are here to stay. We also know we need brilliant, creative minds to make content to feed the machine. The question of the future doesn’t have a straightforward answer,” she said.

“But I do think every time distribution technology changes, it calls for new or updated terms. And that just isn’t happening right now.”