Last year marked a big moment for Netflix as two of its biggest and most popular original series ever, “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game,” aired their final episodes. The finales were heavily marketed and drew massive viewership, but while both shows saw spikes in interest that did wonders for Netflix’s brand, the farewell was bittersweet for the megastreamer. It now faces down a future without these cornerstone franchises.
That’s why Netflix is working to fill the gap with a lineup of the next generation of fandom-worthy franchises, for reasons that go beyond viewership numbers and avoiding churn.
“Stranger Things” and “Squid Game” weren’t just ratings hits for Netflix, they were — and continue to be — big moneymakers for the streaming giant. Parrot Analytics estimates that “Stranger Things” brought in over $1 billion in revenue since 2020. Each show pulled in fans eager to live in the fantastical worlds and specific aesthetics offered by the show, creating a wealth of merchandising opportunities and cementing loyal subscribers.
These shows offer Netflix more value than other top performers like “The Night Agent,” which generate high viewership but don’t provide additional revenue streams. Genre-leaning franchises, meanwhile, fuel not only Netflix’s merch business but also its just-launched events business with experiences at Netflix House.
That’s why Netflix is placing bigger bets on some of the next generation of hits, including already popular shows “Wednesday” and “Bridgerton,” which dropped its two-part fourth season in January and February, as well as the well-regarded anime adaptation “One Piece,” which debuted on Tuesday to positive reception from critics and fans (it sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes). As the streamer looks down the barrel, they’re giving the appropriate boosts to world-building genre series like “Avatar: The Last Airbender” Season 2, “Wednesday” Season 3 and the new live-action “Scooby-Doo” series. And that’s not even mentioning global sensation “KPop Demon Hunters,” with a sequel officially announced on Thursday and expansive franchise plans in the works.
These kinds of immersive shows are more critical at a time when competition among the streamers is only getting more fierce, with each player leaning more heavily on franchises that command mass followings, whether it’s Walt Disney’s Star Wars or Marvel or Amazon’s James Bond or “The Boys” franchise. With Netflix bowing out of the race to buy Warner Bros., which held valuable IP like “Harry Potter” and DC, the pressure is on to build and bolster their own franchises for the future.
“We think of this kind of fandom flywheel not just as how we keep our audience and fans engaged in the shows and movies that they already love, but also how we keep them excited about the shows that are coming next,” Netflix VP of U.S. marketing Jonathan Helfgot told TheWrap. “Even when something like ‘Stranger Things’ ends, one of the great things about Netflix is there’s always another great universe for fans to enter into.”
Just how big a loss are “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game”?
While the three-season run for “Squid Game” stands as Netflix’s top three most-watched non-English-language series to date — with a relatively large gap before favorites like “Money Heist” or “Lupin,” no less — viewership for “Stranger Things” has already been outpaced by the streamer’s newer sensations on the English-language TV list, with both “Wednesday” Season 1 and awards heavy-hitter “Adolescence” outpacing “Stranger Things” Seasons 4 and 5, which sit as the streamer’s No. 3 and No. 4 most-watched series to date.
But unlike “Stranger Things” or “Wednesday,” there’s a limited opportunity for buzzy limited series like “Adolescence,” “The Queen’s Gambit” or the Jeffrey Dahmer-focused installment of Ryan Murphy’s “Monster” series — all three of which rank within Netflix’s top 10 TV shows — to craft a family-friendly world or merchandise collection. Franchises “Wednesday” and “Bridgerton,” however, have proved their dominance with returning seasons also taking up several slots on Netflix’s top 10 TV list, and Netflix has capitalized on those existing worlds.
Netflix is clearly equipped to make a hit happen — even an unexpected one like “Adolescence” — a unique positioning that comes with the track record of creating and supporting the fandom around phenomena like “Stranger Things,” which debuted its first season a decade ago.
“The audience really tells us what they want to become a cultural moment,” Helfgot said. “We only set it up and give it the potential, but ‘Stranger Things’ became what it became because it was so embraced and beloved by the fans.”
While the conclusion of the mainline “Stranger Things” series closes the door on that series for for good, there’s an animated series “Tales From ’85” debuting this year and another spinoff from the Duffer Brothers in the works that will keep the franchise alive in a different fashion. The streamer is also keeping the door open to “Squid Game” with unscripted series “Squid Game: The Challenge” and even potentially a U.S. version of the scripted series. But either way, Helfgot notes fans of the franchises aren’t so quick to move on.
“The ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Squid Game’ attractions at Netflix House do continue to be incredibly popular; the consumer products, including Lego sets and clothes and all of those things, they continue to sell incredibly well. So those universes and those characters aren’t going anywhere in fans’ minds,” Helfgot said, noting that the streamer isn’t itching to swap out the attractions for fresher shows anytime soon. “While that remains true, I don’t think they will go anywhere at Netflix Houses either.”
Looking at a deep bench
Netflix is also looking to prop up its existing tentpole series, including well-established fandoms for “Wednesday,” “Bridgerton,” “One Piece” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which all seem to be going strong.
“One Piece” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which bring in an established fandom from the existing franchises, are only dropping their second seasons this year, while “Wednesday,” which also benefits from the “Addams Family” IP, gears up to drop its third. And even “Bridgerton,” should it stick to the plan of one season per each of Julia Quinn’s eight novels, has four seasons or roughly eight years left, taking it though 2034.
To capitalize on the existing series, Netflix has leaned into the fandom to, as Helfgot put it, “create that relationship between the property and the franchise and the fans, where they can continue living in that world and having that relationship with these characters that they love in between seasons of the show, or in between iterations of the film.”
That marketing push looks different for each franchise, with the release of “One Piece” inspiring an escape room experience at Netflix House, whereas “Bridgerton” lends itself to an immersive “Bridgerton” ball and “KPop Demon Hunters” works well with a sing-along iteration in theaters (and loads and loads of merchandise rolling out this year).
Another IP Netflix will soon tap into is “Scooby-Doo” as it gears up for its live-action series, which Helfgot noted comes with the pressure of making sure to “introduce that to the world in a way that feels like it lives up to the Scooby-Doo that they have loved for so many years.
“We’re already thinking about ways that we can make that feel fresh for the 2027 audience, and that it can also feel like it can exist in the Netflix universe.”
Additional IP-based series headed to Netflix soon include the adaptations of “Little House on the Prairie,” “Assassin’s Creed” and “Pride and Prejudice.”
But sometimes big IP bets don’t pay off, with the streamer’s ambitious adaptation of “3 Body Problem” not quite breaking through to the masses in 2024. Two months after its debut, Netflix renewed the series for another two seasons to close out the book trilogy, neither of which have debuted yet.
And “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” an early genre hit in 2018, petered out with subsequent episodes and never quite exploded on the merch front.
“The Witcher” also saw viewership dwindle after its second season and its spinoff series disappointed. The show is now being wound down with a final season to debut this year or next.
One massive tentpole success that Netflix didn’t quite see coming is sensation “KPop Demon Hunters,” which slowly-then-quickly became Netflix’s most-watched movie to date and still ranks high up on the top movies list months after its debut.
“We knew it was an incredible movie. We knew the music was great … but we did not expect it to become the global phenomenon that it did,” Helfgot said. “When that happens … all the normal timelines that you expect in terms of how long it takes to launch a product line, how long it takes to have conversations with toy makers or toy partners, how long it takes to stand up and experience or get something into theater — all those timelines have to go out the window because you have to respond at lightning speed to be able to allow fans to immerse themselves in this world as quickly as possible.”
Indeed, even major toy lines passed on “Kpop Demon Hunters” in the 18 months leading up to its release that Netflix tried to find a partner, which is why extensive toys and merch didn’t start rolling out until this year. Even the best laid franchise plans can’t predict what viewers will respond to.
While “KPop Demon Hunters” doesn’t fill the same TV niche of “Squid Game” or “Stranger Things,” the beauty of streaming is that the medium doesn’t quite matter in the same way, with families already rewatching the 96-minute movie enough for its viewership to surpass the most recent season of “Stranger Things.”
And Netflix is just getting started on that film franchise, with TheWrap exclusively reporting that multiple projects are on the way on top of the sequel. “There are a lot of plans to keep that world and characters and universe that they created alive in many ways for many years to come,” Helfgot said.
