Posted in: Amazon Studios, Netflix, streaming, TV | Tagged: amazon, midnight mass, Mike Flanagan, netflix, the midnight club

Midnight Mass Impacted by Netflix Blu-Ray/DVD "Apathy": Mike Flanagan

In a Tumblr post, Mike Flanagan addressed the importance of Blu-rays & DVDs, hoping Netflix & others change their positions on the matter.

Back in December 2022, we covered Station Eleven showrunner Patrick Somerville's (Netflix's Maniac) sobering story of how the show's creators learned that physical copies existed and Somerville's concerns that the critically-acclaimed series could end up "disappearing" from the streamer – with no physical copies to keep the show alive. It's an all-too-real concern among creators as we find ourselves in a streaming world where companies like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery will "disappear" shows for tax write-off purposes (or any number of reasons). Sometimes, they might end up coming back on a FAST channel (as Warner Bros. Discovery did with Westworld). Or in the case of Final Space's Olan Rogers being given the license to finish the story in graphic novel form. Other times, they're just gone. Thankfully Somerville's ordeal had a happy ending – but that's seeming to be more of an exception to the rule. And it's a topic that Mike Flanagan addressed in a Tumblr post while answering an important question about viewers checking out shows via "other means."

Admitting that his response would be quite different if asked a few years back, Flanagan reveals that his opinion on viewers accessing work through "other means" has "evolved" over time. And while he still urges anyone who checks out something they really liked through an alternate (translation: free) route to throw a couple of bucks at the creators. But as more and more series are ending up in a limbo from which some will never leave, Flanagan points to multimedia companies eliminating the production of physical copies as a decision that's proven to be a dangerous one to the creative community.

Sharing that he "tried very hard to get them to release my work on Blu-ray and DVD," Flanagan shared that Netflix "refused at every turn" because physical media wasn't their focus. "It became clear very fast that their only priority was subscriptions and that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media," Flanagan explained. "While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles or had partnerships who still valued physical media and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like 'Stranger Things,' that wasn't at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model." And later in his post, Flanagan drives home his belief that a number of his works will never be able to be held in fans' hands. "Netflix will likely never release the work I created for them on physical media. I've tried for years but have met with the same apathy throughout," he added.

From there, Flanagan explains that the only reason why there are physical copies of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor is that they were co-produced with Paramount, which retained the physical media rights for those titles and could release them one calendar year after their Netflix debut. But when it comes to titles such as Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and Fall of the House of Usher, the rights to physical copies rest with Netflix (and it's pretty clear where the streamer stands on that matter). But for "a brief, shining moment," Flanagan revealed that Netflix floated the idea to him of a "Flanaverse" Blu-ray box set. "I was very excited. But as abruptly as they had told me they were going to do it, they retracted their offer with a casual, dismissive 'Oh, never mind.' There was very little context offered, simply that the company had changed its mind and weren't interested in physical media for my stuff after all." But thanks to those "other means" that Flanagan addressed earlier, he is now the proud owner of three "excellent" physical copies of Midnight Mass.

With his new deal at Amazon, Flanagan is much more optimistic about his future projects getting a physical release. As Flanagan explains it, Amazon has "a somewhat different perspective on physical media. Their business model is not built entirely on subscribers; far from it. I'm hoping very much that the work I create with them will meet a different fate and be supported in a different manner. As for Netflix, Flanagan is hopeful that the streamer will see the light when it comes to physical content. "I hope sincerely that their [Netflix] thinking on this matter evolves and that they value the content they spend so much money creating enough to protect it for posterity," Flanagan added. "That's up to them; it's their studio, it's their rules. But I like to think they may see that light eventually and realize that exclusivity in a certain window is very cool… but exclusivity in perpetuity limits the audience and endangers the work."

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