After Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, does Netflix have other plans for technology?
Of course, because Netflix has been working on this choose-your-own-adventure story for a good while now, there’s a chance for them to be a little bit ahead of the curve here. They can think about some new ways to use the technology moving forward, both in terms of existing properties and also doing something totally knew.
Speaking via The Hollywood Reporter, Carol Engelbrecht, Netflix’s own director of product innovation, had the following to say about some of their plans with the technology moving forward:
“We do want to take a number of goes at this and see what works for different audiences … That’s what we’re engaged in now: What are the other kinds of stories that we can tell and that folks are excited to tell? And continuing to unearth this iceberg of opportunity and see what’s there.”
We’ve already predicted that this technology is going to take off elsewhere — it’s something we touch on in the video below as one of the biggest things to expect in 2019. With that being said, the clear challenge when it comes to using said technology is that there are going to be a number of shows out there that it doesn’t quite work for. You can’t really do this for a continuous story, mostly because there’s no one universal way to continue things if there are a number of different, separate endings. It only really works for either a one-off or an episode of a long-running show that is meta and in some shape or form non-canon. Given that it takes such a lengthy amount of work in time, though, we can’t see an ordinary show just pulling this out from under their hat.
We definitely anticipate some recreations of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch moving forward, but let’s be clear — we definitely imagine that there are going to be some growing pains when it comes to this technology. Not everyone is going to get it right, and there’s just something about this particular show that made it work due to the imagination and thought put into it from the jump. It wasn’t just about exploiting a technology.
What do you think is going to be coming after Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in terms of the technology’s future? Do you want to watch more stories in this choose-your-own-adventure vein? Share some of your thoughts in the attached comments.
(Photo: Netflix.)