Netflix Is Losing Its Cool

There’s only one reason I haven’t canceled my Netflix subscription. I’ve been counting the days until the streaming service releases the second season of Tim Robinson’s sketch show I Think You Should Leave. (Almost there! It comes out July 6.) But once I tear through Robinson’s latest, it might be time to smash the unsubscribe button. Over the past year, the most popular streamer has become my least-watched. If apps could gather dust, it would have cobwebs.

Netflix is the Kleenex of streaming, a brand so dominant it can stand for the whole of the market. (It’s not “Hulu and chill,” after all.) There are signs that this synecdochal power is waning, though. Shiny new rivals, particularly HBO Max and Disney+, have rolled out their own formidable streaming libraries. Plus, a constellation of smaller streamers have established themselves by catering to niche audiences. Film buffs have MUBI, Ovid, and Criterion; horror fans have Shudder; for anime devotees, there’s Crunchyroll and Funimation; the list goes on. As competitors multiply in the United States, they’re purloining former Netflix staples like The Office and Friends and coming out with features every bit as cinematic as Netflix awards bait like The Irishman. The original streaming giant is finally facing real competition.

Throughout the week, WIRED is publishing a series of essays about the current state of streaming services. First up: Netflix.

With buzz building for these newer services’ hits—like WandaVision on Disney+, or HBO’s Mare of Easttown—streaming analyst Sarah Henschel says it is understandable that Netflix feels less popular right now. But she sees its dominance as far from over. “Netflix is still blowing everyone out of the water, they’re still the market leader.” Financially, it’s in a good place: Having recently rocketed past 200 million subscribers, it has also finally stopped borrowing money. Henschel attributes Netflix’s reputational funk to Covid-related production delays. What’s more, she sees Netflix as completely peerless in international markets. Operating in 190 countries, Netflix has a formidable head start over everyone else, and it pours resources into plucking shows from around the world that perform across borders, like the fun French-language caper Lupin.

Even as it adds subscribers globally, though, Netflix’s domestic market share is shrinking. As that happens, competitors are moving in. According to analysis from streaming guide ReelGood, HBO Max had the most popular blockbuster film releases this spring and early summer with Mortal Kombat and Gorilla v. Kong. Its tag team of action movies made Netflix’s biggest hit, Army of the Dead, look wimpy. Plus, while Netflix continues to build itself into a streamer doubling as a studio, Amazon just bought a studio—MGM—outright. And some of Netflix’s homegrown attempts at making its own Game of Thrones–style or Marvel-style cultural touchstone have fizzled out spectacularly; a television adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic Jupiter’s Legacy, initially intended as a launchpad for a superhero franchise, was abruptly canceled less than a month after it debuted.

Here’s the thing: Jupiter’s Legacy had mediocre reviews. And mediocrity is increasingly a liability when competitors have hotter rosters. I Think You Should Leave aside, the other upcoming show on Netflix I’ve seen people hyped up for is that nightmarish-looking furry-themed dating show Sexy Beasts. And while its commitment to the grotesque appears admirable, Sexy Beasts looks like good-humored trash at best. This is not to say that Netflix is totally devoid of worthwhile content—the limited-series food show High on the Hog comes to mind as a recent creative success—but that its ratio of blah offerings to genuine winners is all off. At least for me, right now, there’s too much filler and not enough appointment television to justify the price, especially with other streamers asking for my money.