Nostalgia has swept through television and film recently, but our collective throwback obsession has been particularly fruitful at Netflix.
In addition to channeling past decades with Baz Luhrmann’s hip-hop saga The Get Down and the ’80s-era phenomenon that is Stranger Things, the streaming network has revamped animated kids’ favorites such as Popples and Voltron and released a film adaptation of the beloved novel The Little Prince. Beat Bugs, another animated series, combines kid-friendly stories with songs by the Beatles. Netflix releases Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, a four-episode revival of the popular WB-turned-CW show Gilmore Girls, today.
Of course, Netflix isn’t the first to evoke bygone eras — Nickelodeon was a pioneer of nostalgia programming, resurfacing popular teen shows such as All That and Clarissa Explains It All in 2011. But that was before the days of “peak TV” and before streaming (as opposed to, say, Netflix’s early DVD mailers) became ubiquitous. At Netflix, nostalgia’s reign is less about fitting in with pop culture trends than it is about the streaming network’s ambitious plans for original content.
“We’re looking, always, for the great stories,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos. “We’re not setting out to find nostalgic projects, but sometimes in the hunt for great stuff, somebody has a great take on something that is hugely familiar.”
As reported by Variety and others, the streaming network announced recently that it is raising $1 billion through a new debt offering to fund more original content. In September, Netflix reiterated its focus on original series and films. Netflix planned to release about 600 hours of original programming in 2016. Next year, the network expects to release more than 1,000 hours of original content.
Stranger Things wasn’t a traditional reboot, but it paid homage to pop culture mainstays of the late ’70s and ’80s, including Ridley Scott’s Alien, Rob Reiner’s 1986 film Stand By Me and ’80s film fare from Steven Spielberg, including E.T. Similarly, The Get Down added to the nostalgia craze with an extravagant, well-researched take on the early days of hip-hop in the Bronx.
Stranger Things was a surprise summer hit, though Sarandos said the network “definitely knew we had something special” after watching early episode cuts. According to research Netflix released in September, most people who became big enough fans to watch all 10 episodes of the sci-fi thriller did so after finishing the second installment.
Sarandos said Stranger Things is popular on a global scale, although that’s difficult to quantify because Netflix doesn’t share ratings information. Sarandos said the company knows viewing numbers “with incredible granularity,” but it doesn’t consider viewership the best measure of success because it doesn’t sell advertising. Instead, the company focuses on subscriber growth, which is on an upswing.
Sarandos points to the immense social media following that Stranger Things and members of its cast earned after the August premiere as evidence of the show’s dedicated fans. “There’s no question when something is working in America … because everyone is talking about it,” Sarandos said.
When it comes to more traditional reboots, Netflix has arguably been more discerning than other networks about which shows are revived. Full House and Gilmore Girls both have multigenerational fan bases that make the idea of continuing those stories appealing.