How Netflix and its ‘showrunners’ are changing the game
The entertainment industry is being turned upside down by a new breed of executive. It’s someone who doesn’t wear a suit, doesn’t keep normal office hours, and is absorbed in entirely fictional worlds. Yet, this person has become the rainmaker of an industry that is being revolutionised.
The title of the executive provides the clue to the power invested in the role: showrunner. This is the person who has both creative and managerial control over a TV series, who has become central to the success of blockbuster shows on Netflix and other streaming platforms.
Showrunners have been with us for some time, though they were more typically called executive producers at the TV networks.
However, as hit series have become increasingly important on streaming platforms, especially on Netflix, the role of the showrunner in the longevity of shows has moved to the front and centre of content strategy.
Take Breaking Bad, which ended its fiveseason run in 2013: showrunner Vince Gilligan is credited with its original success and its ongoing popularity.
The central role of the showrunner is deeply apparent in one of the big entertainment events of the year, a new series called The Umbrella Academy, whose first episode aired on Netflix on Friday.
The showrunner, Steve Blackman, solidified his credentials as both writer and executive producer on the award-winning series Fargo. He followed it up with coshowrunner duties on the science-fiction masterpiece Altered Carbon.
Umbrella Academy is based on the comic book by rock singer Gerard Way. Though the series follows Way’s story faithfully, the casting, styling and subplots are all Blackman’s vision.
It is ultimately the tale of a dysfunctional family, rather than a superhero’s adventure. The heart of the story is not the action, as in almost every other superhero movie or series, but rather exploring what it takes to bring a broken family together.
Blackman told Business Times that Netflix had not so much changed the role of showrunners as it had become more supportive of their vision.
“They’re very creatively supportive. I never felt that until I worked for Netflix, a company saying to me, ‘What can we do to help your vision?’ as opposed to saying, ‘How can we support
It’s the same job but I don’t have to answer to people who answer to advertisers
advertisers?’
“I’ve done this for network, I’ve done this for cable, I’ve done this now for streaming. It’s the same job, but now I don’t have to answer to people who answer to advertisers. I don’t have to worry about that part.
“I’m responsible for everything creative from the very beginning to the very end. From the writing of it, I did all the production design with the production designer, to hiring all the creative directors, shooting it all, producing it all, and then doing all of the post-production.”
The most tangible, yet invisible, element of the growing power of the showrunner is something as simple as time.
“It was six months of post-production — that took as long as it did to shoot it. It was 18 months from start to finish to do 10 episodes. In that same amount of time, you could do three seasons of network television.”
Clearly, the investment is paying off.