House of Cards star and executive producer Kevin Spacey has had some very choice words for the entertainment industry recently, with a particular focus on television executives.
The Oscar-wining actor gave the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival where he spoke for about an hour about the current state of the medium. During the course of the talk, Spacey called out industry heads for lacking the imagination and strength of will to create the kind of content that audiences are demanding.
“We know what works and the only thing we don’t know is why it’s so difficult to find executives with the fortitude, the wisdom and the balls to do it,” he said, criticizing the standard pilot process versus the straight-to-series model.
Spacey went on to praise Netflix for trusting the House of Cards team to create the show that they wanted to create, in the time they needed to create it. “Of course we went to all the major networks… and every single one was very interested in the idea… but every one of them wanted us to do a pilot first… Netflix was the only network that said, ‘We believe in you. We’ve run our data and it tells us that our audience would watch this series. We don’t need you to do a pilot. How many episodes do you want to do?’” Adding that he predicted that any differentiation between the television, film or online platforms “will fall away” within the next 10-15 years.
Take a look at an excerpt from the speech in which Spacey outlines his take on the faulty pilot structure below:
Spacey followed-up his speech with a Q&A the next day where, as Deadline reports, he refereed to the event as a, "“good opportunity to look at where the industry is now… and an opportunity to talk about some of the warning signs that Hollywood and the industry aren’t hearing.”
Spacey essentially feels that industry players are "too lazy" to look beyond the standard avenues for fresh, new content. “I’ll hear people are doing a show in a pub or a basement and it’s incredible and they can’t get anyone to come see it," he reflected. "No agent or manager or exec will go. You have to get off your ass and go look. If executives and people in the talent business don’t participate… they’re going to miss it.” He stressed that creators will simply find their own avenues for distribution, such as YouTube, “and the networks are going to miss it.”
"In many cases a pilot is a failsafe for a lot of networks.” Spacey continued, “When you look at the amount of money spent in pilot season, everybody says it’s crazy. But they keep doing it because it’s all they know how to do.” That actor did concede that the pedigree that he and director David Fincher brought to House of Cards made the Netflix deal easier to negotiate. “There’s no doubt it’s a tougher road for people without a track record.”
He, again, praised the Netflix all-at-once/binge-viewing release model and advocated for an increase in theatrical, online, VOD and DVD day and date releases for films. Netflix has been notoriously reticent to release any concrete viewership numbers for their original programming, when Spacey was asked if the company's significant $100 million investment for two seasons of House of Cards was paying off, the actor refereed to subscriber figures and pointed out that in the UK the service has just passed the 1.5M member mark. “I’d say they’re making money,” he concluded.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.
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