Amar Akbar Anthony

I got into this discussion over lunch when I heard about the Netflix series “Black Mirror” which allows the audience to choose among a set of possible story endings. This is an excellent development, in my view, in that it not only brings more suspense and interest or attention to the content, on the lighter side it would also prevent spoilers.

Ever since I heard about south Indian movies that had different climaxes (although to appease the fan base in different regions), I have always wondered why not have multiple possibilities for a movie climax and serve (stream) the appropriate one depending on the goal of the movie audience - i.e., if the goal is to just watch the movie and return home happy, one could have a happy ending, if the viewer is adventurous or an FPS gamer, one could have a violent or tragic ending, etc.

Now that we have personalization using big data analytics everywhere, it should be possible for a streaming service to identify the likes and dislikes of the audience based on previous perferences, reviews, age, likes, and the many similar features to identify the best climax for each specific viewer, besides providing the viewer the choice to choose from alternate climaxes. Of course, the cost is in the making of several different versions of a movie or TV series which in a way could be reduced using today’s CGI that only gets better over time. The upshot would be more viewership and more discussion centered around the various climaxes. Instead of viewers just watching the movie and rating them, each different climax of the same movie would get rated by different personalities. Such a service could also stream a movie ending in such a way as to cheer you up when you are dull or to pump you up when you are demotivated. Movies will never be the same again!

If such a personalization of streaming content were to happen who would lead the way? Would it be Amazon Fire TV who has the machine learning backend to make personalization happen, NetFlix who has the influence to get the producers to make several interesting versions of a movie or TV series or Apple TV service if Apple were to get its innovation crown back? What do you think?