Netflix cues up 2nd round of 'Orange' before 1st season airs
In
a show of confidence, Netflix greenlights another season of prison
dramedy "Orange Is the New Black" before subscribers have seen it.
Netflix's next original series to premiere, "Orange Is the New Black,"
is already set to come back next year before the company's subscribers
have a chance to see the first go-round.
The renewal of the show, which is about a woman who must put her
comfortable New York life on hold to serve a 15-month prison sentence,
is clearly a display of confidence in the program, but it's not
unprecedented. Netflix ordered two seasons of "House of Cards" sight
unseen, before it had any assurances it would become the home run that
it did.
But "Orange Is the New Black" and "House of Cards" are in the same sweet
spot. Both fit the mold of HBO or Showtime programming, which
buttresses Netflix's goal to grow beyond a catalog of older movies and
television shows into a must-visit destination for the stuff of water
cooler chatter that ultimately drives subscriptions.
The coming program also gets its bona fides in that realm from creator
and executive producer Jenji Kohan, the creator Showtime's hit "Weeds."
Original shows and films are the rage now, with tech outfits spanning Amazon, Microsoft's Halo franchise and AOL investing in exclusive programs.
The company's head of content, Ted Sarandos, has said the budget for
original programming will as much as triple over the next couple years,
from less than 5 percent of the total content budget now.
Of its homegrown series the public has already seen, "Arrested
Development" is the only one without the go-ahead for an encore. Last
week, Netflix ordered up
a second season of horror thriller "Hemlock Grove." And "Lilyhammer,"
about a New York gangster starting over in Norway, has a return season
in production.
The most high-profile of Netflix's programming endeavors after "House of Cards," "Arrested Development" lacked the same response as that series,
though the Herculean effort it took to produce the new episodes of the
dark comedy are likely the larger factor, as Netflix has heralded the
show's reception.
Netflix has a couple other original shows on its marquee for the back
half of the year: "Derek," a comedic look at life in a senior center
from Ricky Gervais and "Turbo: F.A.S.T.," a children's program in
collaboration with DreamWorks Animation. Next year brings science
fiction thriller "Sense8" from the Wachowski siblings, who created the
Matrix trilogy.
Emily Ratajkowski does Paris watch online.