Netflix has been pumping out original content for so long and at such an immense scale that it recently released its second original movie entitled War Machine .
Although the Brad Pitt-starring first iteration sank like a stone in 2017, the unrelated new War Machine , led by Reacher ’s Alan Ritchson, was reportedly a ratings smash, hitting 10th on Netflix’s all-time most-watched movies list , with 140 million views. So far, it’s the platform’s biggest movie this year.
If the dearth of online chatter around it is any indication, though, it’s gotten all too easy to have zero interest in or opinions about Netflix’s biggest projects.
Presumably, very few people got yelled at on social media for sharing War Machine spoilers, or felt slighted by a significant other for watching it without them. By all accounts, it’s a pretty good movie , but far from what could be considered an “event,” despite a sheen of event-ness being a reasonable expectation for any studio’s biggest film of the year.
Instead, it feels more like a movie designed with the goal of capturing a Super Bowl number of eyeballs . That’s the main problem with 2020s Netflix: It gets eyeballs watching far more than it gets tongues wagging.
If a Super Bowl-size event takes place and nobody talks about it, does it even matter?
To be clear, Netflix is still an apex predator in the streaming wars (although it may be dwarfed by the world’s true streaming leader, YouTube). At the end of last year, Netflix topped 325 million subscribers , and in the first half of 2026, it logged 97.7 billion hours watched , landing 11 titles on Nielsen’s top 20 original series.
But just because a lot of people still watch Netflix doesn’t mean they like what they’re seeing.
While revenue was up 12% during its third quarter, engagement is estimated to be down. According to a Jefferies analysis cited by Reuters , average monthly viewing time per member declined from 66 hours in the first half of 2023 to 49 hours in the first half of 2026.
It’s as clear an indication as any that Netflix has drifted away from the center of pop culture.
Between an overabundance of streaming options—and the fact that they’re all competing against the likes of TikTok and other attention-seekers—it’s tempting to posit there’s no longer any such thing as a zeitgeist hit. But only sometimes.
Eventually, something like HBO’s heart-palpitating The Pitt or Apple TV’s horror-comedy Widow’s Bay emerges as a word-of-mouth sensation that sweeps the Emmys, proving it’s still entirely possible to make movies and shows that put pop culture in a choke hold. Netflix is just no longer as efficient as it once was at developing them.
While the zeitgeist remains intact, Netflix is now in danger of becoming a zeit ghost .
Quantity over quality
One of the major issues affecting the platform is too much signal and not enough noise.
Just last year, Netflix released the anime film K-Pop Demon Hunters , a bona fide phenomenon, along with the timely chiller Adolescence , a must-see limited series, but those were only 2 of the 597 original movies and series that Netflix reportedly released in 2025—and it’s hard to think of something comparatively popular that the streamer has put out since.
The quirky melodrama Remarkably Bright Creatures won some Emmys, and a just-released, Florence Pugh-led adaptation of East of Eden made a splash.
But they’re sharing crowded Netflix menu space with Sacha Baron Cohen’s dud romcom Ladies First , two adaptations of Harlan Coben novels , and star vehicles for each of Adam Sandler’s daughters , all of which will be joined later this year by reality game show Squid Game: The VIP Challenge , featuring Zac Efron’s younger brother, Dylan.
It’s as if Netflix has taken a little too literally the idea of making something for everybody.
It wasn’t always this way. When Netflix first emerged as a player and innovator in original content in 2013, it came out swinging.
Not only were House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black both powerhouses—the kinds of shows people ask whether you’ve seen yet —but they also comprised two of only three new series Netflix released that year. (Eli Roth’s long-forgotten Hemlock Grove was the third.)
It may not be fair to expect Netflix to retain the same 66% hit rate when it puts out 597 new projects in a year; however, Netflix was under no legal obligation to churn out that many new projects.
At what was arguably its cultural peak in 2019, Netflix released a relatively slight 371 new originals , among them The Witcher , Sex Education , and The Umbrella Academy , not to mention Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us , Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman , and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story .
Back then, that level of quantity was a dramatic escalation.
While Netflix has slowed down on original output in the years since its peak, its closest competitors dabble in the dozens instead of hundreds. Their market share may be nowhere near Netflix’s, but their hit-to-miss ratios are comparatively off the charts.
Breadth over depth
Following reports of a subscriber drop in April 2022, Netflix posted its largest one-day plunge in stocks in the company’s entire history, shedding $54 billion in market cap.
To right the ship, Netflix cracked down on password-sharing , introduced ad-supported tiers , and stopped pushing the limits of how much original content one streamer can possibly produce in a calendar year.
As it began stabilizing subscriber growth and accelerating profits, though, Netflix also embarked on a different form of expansion—instead of more original content, more kinds of content.
Starting in 2023, Netflix branched out into live events with Chris Rock’s special Selective Outrage .
Later that year, it got into the live sports business, with The Netflix Cup , followed by a series of similar events and, eventually, a $5 billion deal to become the home of WWE Raw through 2035.
Finally, earlier this year the streamer began airing a wide range of well-established video podcasts , or “talk shows” as they were once known .
With all this expansion, Netflix increased the breadth of reasons to subscribe—while weakening its earlier promise as a hub for buzzy movies and TV shows.
It feels almost like a slap in the face to scroll through a vast menu of seemingly interchangeable new Netflix movies and shows, only for those options to be surrounded by a blizzard of podcasts, sports events, and The Roast of Theo Von . (That last one is not a real thing. Yet.)
Throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks mostly just leaves the thrower with a ridiculously messy wall, and that’s what Netflix looks like now. Instead of reinventing the maximalism of linear cable, perhaps the streamer should try to reinvent the hit-rate of 2013 Netflix.
It certainly seems to have worked for Apple TV, whose tightly curated slate keeps producing prestigious smashes like Pluribus —and exponentially less filler.
Not only did Apple outperform Netflix at the last two Emmys, Apple led all network and streaming services for the first time this year . It scored 29 total wins, including 14 for Widow’s Bay , breaking the record for most-winning freshman comedy, which Apple previously broke in 2025 with 13 wins for The Studio .
Whether Apple’s success is a direct result of its less-is-more strategy or not, it reflects poorly on Netflix-style excess.
Burn and churn
It’s unfortunate enough that Netflix now encompasses everything, but it also feels permanently on the edge of becoming anything .
Of all the explanations for the recent phenomenon of viewers not returning for a second seasons of hit Netflix shows , one of the more plausible ones is that Netflix’s itchy trigger finger for cancellations has trained viewers to not get too attached to new series.
Barring vanishingly rare exceptions like the juggernaut of Bridgerton , most shows on Netflix feel ephemeral and thus skippable. That transient nature is starting to bleed over to the talent behind its programming, along with Netflix’s staff and its C-suite.
Over the last few years, Netflix has reportedly lost out on renewals for its deals with Dahmer creator Ryan Murphy , Stranger Things ’s Duffer Brothers , and, most recently , director David Fincher—who made three movies with Netflix over the past six years.
It must also sting that after The Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan left in 2022, his first post-Netflix series, the just-released and much-discussed Carrie , already appears to be a sizable hit for Prime Video.
As for in-house turnover, Netflix laid off 1,000 employees last week, its largest workforce reduction yet, and this week the company fired film chief Dan Lin, director of original series Carolina Garcia, and content chief Bela Bajaria.
Perhaps these exits could be read as a sign that Netflix is aware of having missed the mark with its movies and TV shows recently. On the surface, though, it just scans as instability, suggesting these executives’ replacements have an impossible job ahead.
It’s anyone’s guess what the next iteration of Netflix will look like, but the 2026 version is overstuffed, strategically unmoored, and completely illegible from a branding perspective.
What has long been considered the most essential streamer is starting to feel increasingly optional—a membership to dip in and out of when one of its hundreds of annual original projects merits it.
If Netflix wants to be more than just a profitable quagmire again, it will have to go back to winning viewers’ hearts instead of capturing their eyeballs.
