Never saw the show, but over the weekend it was announced that the Netflix show Girlboss, based on the life of Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amorusa, was cancelled.  This article, by Matthew Dessem and found on Slate.com, is about the cancellation:

Netflix fires Girlboss

Again, I never saw the show and, most likely, never will.  There’s just too much entertainment out there and this particular topic, fashion, doesn’t intrigue me enough to see it though I’m certain there is/was an audience -though not enough of one- to get it made for at least the one season.

I point this out because Netflix, of late, appears to be paring down their shows.  They cancelled Sense8 and The Get Down in the previous month and who knows if they’re going to pare down a little more.

Not all that long ago -in late March as a matter of fact- I wrote about how much money Netflix was spending on what amounted to four original movies.  The movies, Death Note, Will Smith’s Bright, Brad Pitt’s War Machine, and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, are projected to cost Netflix a whopping $295 million to make.

That’s one hell of a lot of dough.

I felt then, as I do now, that Netflix is clearly on a roll and clearly has a lot of money to invest but wondered if going for such high end expensive projects might be…well…risky.  While they seem to be doing reasonably well with their TV shows (another expense, it should be noted), it seemed nearly incomprehensible to spend that much money on “just” four movies, even with the big names attached to them.

I can’t help but wonder, three months later, if some of the paring down of TV shows in this past couple of weeks indicates that those at Netflix are beginning to realize they can’t sustain so many projects and invest that much money without -I know this is going to sound childishly simple- making it back.

At least making it back, if not actually turning a profit.

Much as I love movies and follow all the stories regarding the studios and features to come, their continued success relies, as it does with so many companies, with the bottom line.

If Actor X or Director Y make a film that bombs, hard, odds are those who could potentially back them will be more hesitant to invest in their next project(s).  If they make a bundle with their film, obviously the opposite is the case and said Actor or Director may find themselves in the position to do what they want rather than what they can get.

With Netflix, I had the impression from that first story that they were so flush with cash and were so enamored with movies and TV shows (not unlike so many of us) that they felt they could turn around and make things they’d like to see.  They invested big bucks into shows and, now, movies but, again, I can’t help but wonder if this paring down shows they’ve realized they can’t simply keep funding projects that don’t turn at least a modest profit for them.

Someone far more clever than I once said of a business (it doesn’t really matter which one as it can apply to so many of them), that “You can make a small fortune on it, provided you go into it with a large fortune”.

So it may be with Netflix and their movies and TV shows, if they’re not careful.