Prey is a big hit for Hulu. If only there was a way to make money off it
The latest Predator landed at #1 on Hulu this weekend. Now, imagine if every viewer paid $15 to see it
Aux News Prey
Tom Cruise may have saved the movies this summer, but another smaller, bloodier sequel is also grabbing eyeballs and ripping spines (in a good way). The Predator prequel Prey landed atop Hulu’s viewership rankings this weekend. Per Deadline, it was the biggest premiere in the streamer’s history, netting bigger numbers than any movie or TV show before.
Here comes the disclaimer that we shouldn’t accept these numbers as scripture—as much as we would love to make a whole religion out of Hulu’s viewership stats. Like Netflix, Hulu didn’t release numbers, just an acknowledgment that, based on the total number of viewing hours, Prey was number one. We suppose the difference between Prey and Netflix’s $200 million piece of content, The Gray Man, is that people are actually talking about and recommending Prey, garnering that word-of-mouth buzz that used to be important. Meanwhile, no one’s ever heard of a movie called The Gray Man, and anyone who says otherwise must be lying. Streamers are ruthlessly cagey about these numbers for some reason. Heck, they won’t even tell Ben Stiller how many people are watching Severance, which is “really weird,” as he put it.
Nonsense like that make us wish Prey had been released in theaters, where people could pay $15 a pop to see it, everyone gets paid for their work, and more movies get made. Granted, there’s no way to tell if a Predator sequel about the Comanche Nation set 300 years ago would go over at the box office. And there’s no way to know if people would be interested in seeing a movie driven by a good idea rather than a cynical exercise in leveraging existing I.P. Although, a lot of people went to see Nope, another surprising alien encounter picture with a strong sense of character, place, and scope.
It’s even easier to laugh at these things from the sidelines, pleading with studios to release movies in theaters so that we can fully enjoy the work the team behind Prey achieved. Either way, we’re happy to see a movie as fun, original, and exciting as Prey make its way to the top of Hulu, proving that if it bleeds, people will watch it.
152 Comments
I signed up and gave Hulu $8 for my brother and myself to watch it but there really wasn’t anything else to watch there (might watch Devs) so I’ll be cancelling it. Great great movie and would really look great on the big screen.
I love that Trachtenberg’s two movies so far are of badass women who have to overcome an overwhelming foe/environment. It will be pretty cool to see his next film be the same to make them a trilogy.
i know he wanted to make a Portal movie (he rose to prominence with a really good Portal short in 2011) which would check the “woman meets overwhelming foe” box perfectly but let’s be real… this world isn’t a good enough place to gift us a decently-budgeted, full-length Portal moviealso, there’s a lot of great shit on Hulu. Devs does absolutely rule, but also check out the catalog of Neon films. i highly recommend Luce, Monos, Wild Rose, The Worst Person in the World and the Killing of Two Lovers. and of course Pig and Parasite, on the off-chance those have eluded you
The Bear is a pretty great show I watched on Hulu earlier this week. The Letterkenny spinoff show Shoresy is also a fun show. There’s also a good deal of older shows on Hulu that you can check out if you missed them the first time around. Things like Black Sails, Lost, The Shield, X-Files, Justified, Legion, Sons of Anarchy, Fargo, Atlanta, Venture Bros, Vikings, Hannibal, The Americans, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, What We Do In the Shadows, King of the Hill, etc. And I’m sure there’s some movies to watch, also.Sheesh, it’s like I’m a Hulu salesman or something. Whatever, I just find the endless selection of things to watch to be pretty cool, like a kid in a candy store.
Yeah, FX on Hulu carrying both FX’s trove of televised shows and exclusives like The Bear just shows off how much they’re lapping the field in original programming like they’re Steve Rogers running past Sam Wilson. They just crank out one winner after another.
As a YouTubeTV subscriber it annoys me to no end when I see “FX on Hulu”, when it’s really just straight to Hulu, and never available on FX. It’s just lies.Like American Horror Stories. That should be an FX show.
Well, yeah, “FX on Hulu” is their official designation for their Hulu streaming category. That’s not a lie, they’ve had that delineation in place for a few years now.While FXoH offers an archive of their mothership channel, it also has exclusive original programming that skips the linear channel completely (American Horror Stories being one of them, The Bear another), usually for one of two reasons: content that’s too graphic even for their TV-MA stamp (for example, the nudity in “Y: The Last Man” and “Pistol”) or that FX greenlit more shows than they can actually air on the nights they have earmarked for original programming and use the surplus to drive traffic to their Hulu offering.Basically, if you hear “FX, next day on Hulu”, that’s a linear TV offering available to you (like What We Do In The Shadows and The Old Man). If you hear “FX on Hulu” for an active show, that’s a streaming exclusive.
I also have Youtube TV so I have access to most of those shows. I heard lot of good things about The Bear!
Only Murders in the Building is also good.
Also Golden Girls my go to watching while doing chores show.
Hulu is great. If OP can’t find anything worth watching, it’s because they aren’t looking.
As long as you’re supporting Prey, which is very Native-forward, you should try Reservation Dogs. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking and so so good.Still quite Native-friendly if more focused on white folks, I recommend Letterkenny and its spinoff Shoresy.
Taika is always good for laughs! I forgot that’s on there.
It was my favorite new show last year. I’m so legit impressed by how easily it moves between goofy laughs and deep character trauma. No hiccups or feeling forced, just one episode you’re crying with laughter and the next just crying.
Shoresy showcases so much Indigenous talent. Also, Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat (Sanguinet in Shoresy) is Itsee in Prey.
I know she’s a producer but I wish Tiio would show up as Tannis. Mostly because I have a Tiio crush. (She’s great in a small role on Reservation Dogs)
There’s Letterkenny, Shoresy, Community, Brooklyn 99, Solar Opposites, Rick & Morty.
Just my recommendations:- Only Murders in the Building- The Orville- Mr. Inbetween- Devs- Solar Opposites- Harrow- Hit Monkey- The Oldman- Under the Banner of HeavenJust a few of what we enjoyed watching.
They got $8 out of you along with everyone else paying for a Hulu subscription all without the cost of logistics of distributing a film to various theaters. Money wise people will spend a limited amount every month to go to a movie theater. If a single month of service costs you 50-75% of a movie ticket even though you are getting more access to films and shows the studio is still getting more money from people continuing to subscribe.
You’re not considering the multiple people viewing at once on one screen factor. That changes your math. You’re looking at $8 per person compared to $15 per person at the theatres. There are scenario’s where 5 people are watching on Hulu for $8 at the same time. Not all people but there will be some. That would be $15 x 5 at the theatres and still $8 x 1 on hulu for that same viewing party.
While viewing parties happen I’m willing to bet that most of the people still have thier own streaming accounts. Plus most people aren’t strategically subscribing and cancelling thier services so it is a much more long term revenue stream even though individual costs are lower. Also with the cost of things being what they are in a theater going out frequently doesn’t make as much sense for most people. People are strategically decided what the see in theaters and what they are willing to wait for streaming. As much as I like Prey I probably wouldn’t shell out $15 to watch it in a theater. I wanted to see it but given the franchise history I wouldn’t have spent extra money to do so.
To your 5 person viewing scenario to be fully valid you must assume all the people streaming it would also have spent money to see it. While my personal situation is only anecdotal I’m fairly certain a lot of other people would fall into that category. Total seats sold were on the decline well before the pandemic hit. All it did was force the issue.
Devs is….interesting. I watched it a while back and I’m still not sure if I liked it or not. Very bizarre show with an interesting pseudo sci-fi premise and “twist,” and it at least proves Nick Offerman has range outside of his Ron Swanson/comedy role personas. Also if you can’t find *anything* else on Hulu you’re interested in watching, you must be incredibly picky in your movie/tv tastes. As other commenters have noted, it’s at the very least a great way to keep up with syndicated shows on networks like FX, Fox, and ABC if you’re like me and don’t pay for standard cable. I doubt I would have been able to consistently keep up with shows like Bob’s Burgers, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Abbott Elementary, What We Do in the Shadows, or Duncanville if it wasn’t for Hulu. Plus they’ve got some pretty decent original programming like Only Murders in the Building, The Great, and The Dropout.
100% with you on Devs. Ultimately I enjoyed it but I can’t say I wholly recommend it.And huzzah to The Great! Those are some fucking performances, right?! Woof.
Ymmv and all that but Hulu is probably the most-watched streamer in our house. Has great shows, good movies, and an interface that actually works
Atlanta, Only Murders In the Building, The Terror, Westworld, Reservation Dogs, The Orville, What We Do In The Shadows, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Pam & Tommy, and MODOK off the top of my head.
Please watch Future Man. That is all I have to add.
Lodge 49 is an underwatched gem.
Letterkenny. Get on it. And Shorsey.
If you’ve got Hulu for the month and love “badass women in historical settings vs an impossible foe” genre, I recommend The Great! Incredibly funny, deeply crass, occasionally shockingly violent, and awesome performances.
Also The Princess was pretty solid. Another bad-ass woman fighting impossible odds. It’s a bit silly in places, but overall the action is solid and for a reverse Raid or Die Hard or whatever other “trapped in a tower” film you want to compare it to, it holds up really well.
Devs, Fargo, Legion, What We Do in the Shadows, Bobs Burgers. Superstore is surprisingly good (though that’s been said so often it’s no longer surprising)
Devs is really great. Hulu does have pretty good content and they get a surprising amount of new and newer movies.
WTF is the point of this article?Near as I can tell, the thesis is “Prey is good, but Hulu is bad because reasons.”
basically i think what they’re saying is that it would have been cool to see the movie on the big screen PLUS Hulu would have made some good money so their policy of never releasing in theaters is pretty silly. even Netflix throws their assorted Gray Mans and Irishmans and Power of the Dogs into theaters when they know they have a big film on their handsAmazon even put fucking ANNETTE in theaters, but out of all the big streamers Hulu seems to have a pretty hardline stance against theatrical releases
“even Netflix throws their assorted Gray Mans and Irishmans and Power of the Dogs into theaters when they know they have a big film on their hands”And they make so pathetic money that Netflix doesn’t even share the box office data like every other studio.
*Grays Man*Isrishman*Powers of the Dog
It beats the HBOMax strategy, at least.
This might be why it had to go straight to streaming, though?(Not my find, I originally saw this here: https://www.avclub.com/1849383529 courtesy of AV Clubber I am Curious Oranj)
As that is a 20 day old tweet, kinda surprising that the writer neglected to add that information to the article.
….surprising how?
In that it is vital information to the argument.And that it was previously mentioned on this very site.Per: Cura Te Ipsum
(Not my find, I originally saw this here: https://www.avclub.com/1849383529 courtesy of AV Clubber I am Curious Oranj)
I meant how are you surprised that the current AVClub crack journalists completely whiffed on this readily available and broadly known fact?
Especially when the facts don’t fit the narrative they are trying to create
Some people choose to see the ugliness of the AVClub. The Herbiness. I choose to see the comenters. To believe that the writers will rise to us, to intelligently critique pop culture.
is it? it probably wasn’t in the top-3 news articles the blogger cut & pasted from when he Asked Jeeves: “How does Hulu make money from Prey?”
I just found it from someone on a different comments thread on here. But I am also WTF at this article. There may have been point to it if it explained WHY the movie is only on Hulu, instead of needing the comments to give us actual news.
I think Netflix generally does the theatrical release thing to qualify for awards, rather than any box office revenue.
they why don’t they just put them in one theater for one week (two weeks before the recent rule change) and yank em afterward? some of their movies were in thousands of theaters for a month or longer. seems a bit above and beyond for bare minimum awards contention compliancethey know there are certain movies people would like to see in the theaters and i’m glad to have the option when they do make that decision
Netflix only goes that because in order to get Oscar nominations movies have to be in atleast one theater.
then why do they put em in thousands of theaters for months at a time? Hustle was still playing in every family multiplex around here up until like two weeks ago. Gray Man is still going on tons of screens. i don’t think they have any delusions about Gray Man being an awards contenderthey know that there are certain movies people are gonna wanna see in the theaters, so they oblige. it’s very nice to have the option. i fucking loved seeing Roma on the big screen
Didn’t know that. I think they are wasting money on these Oscar bait movies especially now that they aren’t doing to well.
Are people asking that a lot these days?
Don’t you know, streaming is going to kill movie theaters just like sound, color, radio, tv, cable tv, home movie rentals, home movie ownership and the internet all did before it.
But THIS time everything is going to be different! Forever!
You clicked on it, so…
Other than Top Gun and Nope it’s been a bit of a bummer summer at the theater. I loved Prey and I really wish I could have watched it on the big screen instead of at home.
Maybe for mainstream stuff (Jurassic World, etc.) but there’s been gems this season.
I’m also the only person in the world who enjoyed Thor: Love And Thunder so don’t believe anything I say.
Eh. It’s the service I often have the least luck finding new stuff on. And since I’ve watched everything else on there already (boy do I wish I a exaggerating), and since I hate watching currently airing stuff, it’s just no longer on a “constantly need to be subscribed” basis for me anymore.
bIg sCreEn, pOPcOrn sMelL
There are two things from Gray Man that stick with me:1) The very bad, very cliché dialogue peppered throughout the movie.2) The best line being Chris Evans asking his band of mercenaries(paraphrased): “Will somebody kill this walking Ken doll?!”It’s funny cause of the Barbie Movie.
yeah i didn’t think it was awful but not particularly memorable either. Chris Evans as a bad guy was interesting but seen it already in Knives Out (and Scott Pilgrim, i guess). I still don’t really get Gosling’s appeal but he was his usual self, i suppose. Didn’t seem like the movie made very good use of Jessica Henwick but in fairness i still have like a half hour left to watch
I still couldnt believe how taken I was by the trailer only to have a heartbreak of it ending on “Coming soon to Hulu” when I gladly wouldve used an AMC A-List reservation to see it in a premium format.
Oh poor you, how did you ever manage to continue living?
And I said “Oh cool, I can watch this in my PJs, eat food that doesn’t cost me a fortune and I can pause to go pee”
I guarantee it will get a theatrical run, however limited now.
Hulu didn’t open the door for the movie to contractually shuttle over to HBO Max with a theatrical release BEFORE it was popular. Why the hell do you think it’s a guarantee they’d do that now?
That’s bold, how do you guarantee that? There is nothing currently that indicates that might happen…
I get that it’s better for good things to be successful, but it kinda feels like you’re arguing for poorer viewers to be priced out of content you feel is “too good for streaming”.
Saying that a movie should be in theaters isn’t saying that it shouldn’t be on streaming. Streaming services are full of movies that had a theatrical run.
It’s not like theatrical movies don’t eventually come to streaming services.
poor people also need to accept that they can’t afford every luxury so insisting that a quality film be made accessible to them is a bit ignorant. Here have free things too while we’re at it. These films take a lot of money to make. It shouldn’t be expected that that be made accessibly to everyone. That’s just the way money works. I want a car but I can’t afford one so I guess I don’t get a car.
I’d also add that if you’re so poor that a $15 movie (or $8 matinee) breaks your budget, entertainment is probably the least of your concerns.
Ah yes, poor people are never allowed to have fun. Basic survival only, no new movies.
poor people also need to accept that they can’t afford every luxuryAnd rich people need to accept that poor people will sometimes be able to enjoy the same things they can and get over it.
As a poor person I accept that I’m going to stick to piracy over streaming and covidiot movie theaters. Enjoy paying for what I get for free; some sucker’s got to fund this shit, might as well be you Mr. Moneybags.Also people should get a free or very affordable car if we insist on having urban sprawl with subpar public transportation options.
“You want a decent film on streaming? Can I interest you in the Birdemic franchise?”
For a website that has been horny for TV since its
inception while also continually mocking anyone who dares insist that
the theatrical experience is superior to television this article is the height
of hypocrisy.The writer also ignores the well known fact that the reason this
movie didn’t get a theatrical release is because of stipulations tied to the
Disney purchase of Fox. Also, everyone got paid.The old A.V. Club could often get a little too giddy in
its love of pop culture consumerism. The new A.V. Club is determined
to be miserable about enjoying anything.
“Do you hate movies & TV? Can you cut & paste from news articles you find on internet? Do you have zero original ideas? Great! You’re hired”
That’s a bit unfair. You also have to know hot to embed tweets.
YEAH OKAY BUDDY WE GET IT YOU’RE FROM THE OLD A.V. CLUB.
(jk I’ve been here since the early 2000s myself, I just wanted to try trolling asa frustrated newbie who sees people pining for the old days as an attack on their intelligence for being drawn into A.V. Club more recently teehee).
Uh, I’m an old AVClub user too and I could not disagree more with your characterization here. Old AVClub was full of gen-x hipster nostalgia humpers who loved THE CINEMA. (As well as TV lovers too.) That’s some real selective memory ya got there.
gen-X nostalgia humpers who knew shitloads about movies, music, and classic TV (and reviewed BOOKS!) and where I learned more about those things and the people who made them than pretty much every other source combined.
“while also continually mocking anyone who dares insist that the theatrical experience is superior to television”Citation very much needed.
I wish they did that.
“mocking anyone who dares insist that the theatrical experience is superior to television” Movie theater fetishists deserve to be mocked. Go sniff some popcorn.
“The old A.V. Club could often get a little too giddy in its love of pop culture consumerism. The new A.V. Club is determined to be miserable about enjoying anything.”That’s because the Millennials who write the articles are ageing out of usefulness and realising that their future is listicles, my lad.*cackles in GenX*
I don’t know, I enjoyed it, but would I have watched it in theaters had it gone there first? Probably not. The BigBuckHunter CGI animals were less glaring on a tv screen, so I had more fun with it
“Nonsense like that make us wish Prey had been released in theaters, where people could pay $15 a pop to see it, everyone gets paid for their work”I’m pretty sure everyone got paid for making this movie…?And hopefully it pays Amber with more leading roles, she kicked ass in this one.
I was about to say. Does the writer think movies just get made magically without cost?
Exactly, the vast majority of people working on a movie don’t give a shit where it ends up. The key grips and craft service people got paid. Its only the producers and sometimes directors and actors who care about theatrical release and for the latter, only if they had some sort of deal to take home a percent of the profits. Honestly with the way Hollywood fucks around with accounting to make hit blockbuster movies still look like they lost money to get out of paying profit sharing to actors, its probably better for most actors to take the cash up front and just be done.
“a movie driven by a good idea rather than a cynical exercise in leveraging existing I.P.”Do…do you not know Prey is based on an existing IP?
These people are paid to aggregate not research.
I’ve just accepted that Matt Schimkowitz is a hack. That and The A.V. Club has next to no standards anymore so it seems like a waste of my energy to be upset by it.
It would be cool if they hired some writers who knew about TV and film someday tho.
You should see reviews of Atlanta this season where the author (I’ve blocked his name out of my mind) continually missed the point of the episode week after week and then people would discuss in the comments and someone would chime in with a much more thoughtful assessment of the episode and this happened week after week and every single week the author would jump down unprofessionally into the comments section himself and praise the commenters insisting that “I wish I thought of that”. He did that week after week. I hope he got fired.
Michael Martin! That’s it. If you wanna see how ghetto the A.V. Club has gotten go read Michael Martin’s Atlanta season 3 reviews. They’re hilarious.
Man, a presumably white person using “ghetto” the way white people constantly use “ghetto” in a thread discussing Atlanta is one of the most uncomfortably meta moments of the day right now.
Not sure I see the issue here. The reviewer praised the readers for being smart therefore fire the reviewer? Why? Unless there’s an open call from the site asking for freelancers to replace him, why do you think this is a reasonable criticism?
There’s such thing as a GOOD usage of an existing IP, and what they’re saying is that Prey is a smart idea for an existing IP, rather than just a cynical ‘let’s crank out another Predator, people will watch that’ which… well, most of the other Predator movies have been.
I have to assume this is simply an error no one caught because they don’t pay for editors here.
Are you all willfully misunderstanding that sentence? It probably should have read “solely cynical exercise” but I thought the intent was still clear.
Yeah that is a weird take. True its a good idea and an interesting take on the IP but its still leveraging it. If this movie was Native Americans vs generic space alien I am 100% it would not have been as popular
Do you not know that Prey is the antithesis of ‘ a cynical exercise’?
Pretty sure he’s aware, the point being that they could shit out another rehash and drop it on Hulu (the cynical part), but instead actually did something different and interesting with it. Which I agree is refreshing.
I definitely get your point, but I think there is a world where an original and exciting movie can be made off of existing IP, as opposed to shameless cash grabs.I feel a decent recent (he’s got bars!) example is Spiderman. Into The Spiderverse was a really fun, energetic, just all around blast of a movie that nevertheless plays off of very familiar characters (for the most part). That most recent live-action Spiderman that attempted to multiverse together Tobey and Garfield and bring back all the other baddies, though, was just like the member-berries version of moviemaking; deeply uninspired and banking entirely on the audience’s appetite to go “hey yeah, I DO remember that earlier movie with that guy – huh.”
I still think that’s still fair, you can base stuff on existing IP in an _un_cynical way, which Prey does
I took it to mean this was an actual good way to utilize an existing IP? I don’t know. Prey isn’t a cynical exercise regardless!
Sure but prior to this in the last 35 years there had been 6 Predator movies and only the first one from 1987 has any respect from audiences. It’s an existing IP, but not one that has any clout or built in audience anymore, same with the Terminator movies. “Predator vs. Natives” wasn’t something anyone was asking for. For all intents and purposes the movie had to succeed on its own merits and not the brand .
I didn’t even know it was a Predator movie until after I’d already been hearing things about it.
Nonsense like that make us wish Prey had been released in theaters, where people could pay $15 a pop to see it, everyone gets paid for their work, and more movies get made.Talk like that is going to get you hit with replies from people mathsplaining to you how ack-shew-uh-lee, $8/month adds up to $96 a year times the total number of households, which is more people than would’ve gone to see it in theaters (while ignoring that that’s not how the subscription revenue is allocated)
The writer is confused about how movies work and think everyone on set work for commission or something.
Great, as a grey I can’t edit my posts now. Another great moment in Kinja history.
I only watched it because I still had a couple of days left to go on the subscription. I pulled the plug on the sub because I watched The Orville, the season wrapped up and goddamned, there is NOTHING on hulu whatsoever to compel me to stick around.So yeah, the new Predator movie being the biggest smash on the platform isn’t exactly a huge feat. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
why does no one think there’s anything on Hulu? This is the second post now. That’s the only place you can watch Only Murders In The Building. There’s tonnes of stuff there.
Yeah I do not get it either. I watch Hulu more then any other streaming services because it has the most old shows I like to watch.
Yeah, I got the Live TV version as a replacement for cable. It was like 40% cheaper than cable in my area.
why does no one think there’s anything on Hulu?Because I spent a couple of months on the platform and found fuck all worth watching other than the Orville.I think I wound up watching Demolition Man and Preditor 2 because I was too lazy to get up off the couch to get the blu rays off the shelf. But there was nothing there to compel me to spend 10 bucks a month there.
You can just cancel your account. There’s no need to let us know.
why does no one think there’s anything on Hulu?We live in a time when Netflix just got more Emmy nominations than any network has in the history of the Emmys and people act like there’s nothing on it but B-movie horror and cheap reality shows. Even though they could literally go to the Top 10 list of shows being watched right now and see one reality show… in the #10 spot.People got so comfortable with movie theaters giving them eight options and being bombarded with trailers on television constantly to tell them what to watch they’ve abandoned the basic skills necessary to go find interesting stuff. Not that streaming services are helping, but there’s so much quality content that they’re starting to devalue the content they have access to in order to justify why they’re not watching it as a cope.
“and goddamned, there is NOTHING on hulu whatsoever to compel me to stick around.”
Really? I find that they have a TON of great content.
My perspective is sort of the opposite, but with respect to Prey has a similar result. I already subscribe to Hulu and plan to keep it that way, so Hulu is not making one additional penny off of me with the release of Prey – which I would pay to see in a theater for $13. The question is how many people subscribe just to be able to watch it, and my guess is not all that many.
Literally all FX shows are on Hulu, Sons of Anarchy, Mayans, The Americans, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows, Mr Inbetween. Then there’s the few original movies, Palm Springs, Vacation Friends, Hulu originals like The Bear, Solar Opposites, MODOK, Marvels Hit Monkey. Tons of anime, dubbed and subbed, quite a bit of live sports, I use Hulu more then Netflix or any other streaming service, if you were on it for a month did you even try to find anything? I’ve seen two posts like yours saying nothing good is on Hulu, which is factually incorrect, there’s tons of great content on Hulu.
while i understand that ‘oh no it would go to hbomax first if we released it theatrically’ is the reason…isn’t it even a bigger flex to flip the marketing and be like ‘wow, isn’t it crazy that hbomax needs our content?’ i hate that there isn’t even an impetus to have fun with it. it’s all just line items.
It was being discussed in a recent article that this author – Matt Schimkowitz sometimes add sentences that make no sense (something about Jaseon Bateman’s neck) possibly as an attempt at humour? Anyhow behold the gem from this article:“—as much as we would love to make a whole religion out of Hulu’s viewership stats.”
Wtf does that mean?
Jason Bateman can’t understand why everyone is suddenly paying so much attention to his neck.
Nonsense like that make us wish Prey had been released in theaters, where people could pay $15 a pop to see it, everyone gets paid for their work, and more movies get made. Granted, there’s no way to tell if a Predator sequel about the Comanche Nation set 300 years ago would go over at the box office.Yeah—if Prey had been a theatrical release Disney would have likely done as little as possible to promote or even distribute it, and left it to die on the vine. Then they could point to it and go, “See? Movies with actual Native American/Female heroes aren’t good box office!” This way, at least, everybody can see there is a market for actual Native Americans playing themselves and 110-lb. women heroes who use their powers of observation and brains rather than brawn to defeat eight-foot tall alien Red-Hot Sport Hunters….
Everyone who worked on the film got paid already, so what you’re really arguing for is higher corporate profits and bonuses to executives.
Not sure I take your point. When a theater movie is a smash hit, the “little” people involved in production don’t make more money. Those are salaried people who made their salary when they worked on it. (Whether that salary is actually good or not is a separate point, they still make nothing extra for box office hits).
Honestly if you had to pay $15 to see it, it probably wouldn’t have been a big hit. Not that it wasn’t good but the Predator franchise is not putting butts in seats in the theater and movie going is not what is use to be
That’s true, part of the reason my Dad and I made a point of seeing it the first weekend was because of how easy/available it was. I’m really not sure if we would have seen it at all if it went to theatres. My Dad still hasn’t seen Top Gun and everytime we drive by a theatre he says “Top Gun”.
Now, imagine if every viewer paid $15 to see itThat’s… that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. We have no way of knowing how many people who have seen it would have paid to go see it in a theater, who would have waited for it to stream (me), and who would have just plain never seen it at all.
but the point is…imagine they did.
Are you Gal Gadot?
The only way to know for sure is to ask him if he thinks Palestinians are people?
oof.
Why does everyone assume that no one is “paying” to see films like this on a streaming service, Hulu or otherwise. Hulu is not free and someone is footing the bill, for me Sprint (now T-Mobile) has been paying Hulu to provide me with limited commercial access to Hulu’s content, for others it may be Verizon, etc.. Yes, for me Hulu is “free,” but not really because if I were to switch to a different mobile phone carrier I would need to look into what promotions they offer, or make a decision whether or not to continue paying for Hulu.
At the moment, Hulu is not showing up as a line item on my credit card/banking statement, but T-Mobile is definitely being asked by Hulu to pay them so I have permission to watch. If Xfinity was not giving me Peacock and HBO Max I would have to make a decision to continue to buy-in to those streaming services. So someone is paying streamers money for what everyone claims we are getting for free.
I can tell you right now, when I casually say to myself I will wait to watch something for “free” on Netflix or Disney+ I am still aware that I am paying for the content. If I cancelled Netflix I would no longer see a $20+ line item pop up on my monthly CC statement, but I would have no access to Stranger Things, Sandman, the film Wedding Season (it turned out to be a fun to watch Netflix original film), etc..
There is no free lunch for consumers of content, as someone, the individual consumer, or the carrier behind my cell service is paying someone for me to watch content on streaming services.
Apperently the Hulu through Sprint thing is gonna end soon as well. If you are on T-Mobile you do get Netflix for free for now(and they had deals to get Apple+ and Paramount+ free for a year last winter). But your point still stands, people are paying for these movies, its just a different model. Is it less money, that is hard to say. In theory yes, but in practice for a lot of mid tier movies, especially comedies and dramas, the streaming model is a far better option to make money then a theater release
MAN the quality of the AV club has declined big time since all of the good staff got fired. What a sad shell of its former self, reduced to pointless clickbait articles using a new popular movie to complain about the state of the streaming landscape. What a loser.
What a very weird take. I loved it, but I would have never seen it if it was in the theatre. I only go to movies I know I’ll probably enjoy in the theatre. I’m not paying $15 to experiment. Especially after what a shitshow The Predator was, this would have been a big flop if it went theatrical. On Hulu, it didn’t cost us anything to check out and then word of mouth did the rest.
There is no world in which Prey would be this popular if it was in theaters today. A HUGE reason it’s so popular is precisely because it was available on streaming. And I say this as someone who watched it and loved the movie. It’s really good! But I, and many many others, would not have gone to a theater to see it.
“Prey is a big hit for Hulu. If only there was a way to make money off it”
Disney doesn’t seem to care if it made money, why are you so concerned?
“where people could pay $15 a pop to see it, everyone gets paid for their work”
It’s pretty god damn embarrassing that you work for a pop culture website and have literally NO clue how filmmaking works.
Do you honestly think that everyone worked on the movie for free based on the promise of theatrical royalties?
Predator sequel about the Comanche Nation set 300 years ago Wouldn’t that make it a prequel?
What a pointless, ridiculous article this is. I mean, WTF are you even trying to say?!
My dumb brain keeps reading the lead actor’s name as “Amber Mindhunter”.
Maybe they should not offer the 99 cent a month for a year black Friday deal. I have been paying and still barely watch.
I think people not cancelling Hulu is how they get paid?
“Streamers are ruthlessly cagey about these numbers for some reason. Heck, they won’t even tell Ben Stiller how many people are watching , which is “really weird,” as he put it.”I know it’s absolute madness to expect a pop culture website to understand the basics of the entertainment business, but the fact that streamers do this isn’t even slightly weird.
If they made it known exactly how many people watched a given show/film/etc, then there would be hard numbers by which to compare the next one. And that means that the filmmakers and producers could actually negotiate with more than vague guesses at how much value they bring to a project— kind of like ratings used to do. That is absolutely not in the streamers’ business interests.So until they’re forced to do so, they won’t be sharing any information that would have been called “ratings” in past years. The only thing weird about it is that no one (government, SAG/DGA/WGA, whoever) has forced the issue yet.
Why do movie theater fetishists shill against streaming so much? Why do you care about the profits trillion-dollar studios make or don’t make?
Finally watched Prey last night, it was probably the best Predator movie since the OG one. But one thing that bugged me is like it KNOWS those bolt/arrow things are going to hit where ever the laser is pointed but it tried not once but TWICE to use them, sans bone mask, the second time leading to its end. LOL
I’ve actually talked about and recommended “The Gray Man” to numerous people. I didn’t even know I loved Chris Evans until I saw it. He plays the villain brilliantly. “Prey” is awesome too.
Great movie. Nice to see Hulu get a strong winner getting good word of mouth, hopefully people discover all the other good content on the service like The Bear. And while critics are shitting on The Gray Man, I actually quite enjoyed it. All my buddies also watched it, they also enjoyed it. Looking forward to a sequel
Ignoring the whiny blogger for a minute…If you’ve not watched this film? Do so. It’s actually a genius idea to take the Predator idea (I refuse to call it a franchise unless it involves a surly Millennial serving me it hot with chips) back to a more primitive Earth. We know from the first two films that the Predators have been coming to Earth on multiple occasions in Earth’s past so why not explore that? And to have the human race represented by an Indigenous American woman? Smart. Very smart.It’s not enough to erase the shitfest that was Aliens vs Predators: Requiem. That film should come with a health warning.