MAKING BAD MOVIES—THE BUSINESS MODEL. Amanda Hess describes how the Asylum makes movies. How do they choose a subject? In her interview with the head of production at the Asylum, he says: “We don’t really know the consumer. The consumer is too big and too fractionalized. All we know is we’re making a film for Netflix, and they tell us what they want.†On Netflix, all the films are listed, the good with the bad. Titles are important—for example, Mega Shark versus Crocosaurus. Movie titles that echo successful movies are good—for example, Snakes on a Train or The Da Vinci Treasure. The poster is more important than the movie.
Are the movies made tongue in cheek? No, and in case, you are wondering, not all the viewers are there to laugh at the movies. The example given in the article is that “some people out there were actually terrified by a sharktopus.” How are they written? For a typical film, the Asylum floats a concept to its stable of writers. The writers submit 100-word pitches. If a writer’s pitch is chosen, he produces a draft in 10 days.