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Netflix Feature Request: “Follow”

October 19, 2008 in "Rant" by Kyle Brady [Shortened URL]
Tags: Actors, Actressess, Directors, Feature Request, Movies, Netflix

Netflix, oh Netflix. Will I ever stop loving thee?

As I’ve mentioned before, I not only love Netflix, but I also have what many would probably call an “obsession” with certain actors or directors… I’d prefer to call it “extreme favoritism for the individual in question’s genius”, but whatever. Because of this “obsession” I have a habit of adding all the movies from the actor/director’s cinematic history, and brings me to the point…

If you’re like me and love how Sylvester Stallone plays the same role in all his movies, and want to see every one… you’ve added all his movies to your Queue. But what if he comes out with a new movie, and you don’t keep an ear close enough to the ground to hear about it?

Stallone is a bad example, because his modern movies tend to have astronomical amounts of marketing behind them, but the principle is the same. It can be very difficult to keep track of what movies your favorite actor, actress, or director is involved with, especially if they keep themselves very busy.

The idea comes from Hulu’s “Subscribe” option, where you automatically get the newest releases from any given show added to your Hulu Queue. Programatically, it shouldn’t be difficult. Either there’s a nightly “oh crap, any new movies with [x]?” CRON Job that runs across the whole site, or a special script is run individually whenever new content is added.

For example, I only found out that Brad Pitt is in “Burn After Reading” a few days before it opened in theaters, and even then only because I keep an eye on a large number of blogs. Not having TV and not going to the movies very often make finding information like this difficult, and I feel that this feature would be very useful to a large part of the Netflix customer base, given my previous thoughts.

This could work for directors, like Guillermo del Toro, or anyone else who makes it in the “Netflix name box” (see below).

So, Netflix, please, pretty please, will you implement this feature?

I asked nicely!