Can Paramount+ Build a Streamer Worthy of Its Golden-Era Studio Legacy?
Paramount+ catapulted into the world on March 4, but its arrival didnt exactly inspire mass fanfare. Born out of the ashes of CBS All Access, Paramount+ entered an overcrowded field of subscription streaming platforms whose barrage of bingeable content was already inducing decision fatigue in viewers. Media watchers shrugged, skeptical that Paramount+ could keep pacecreatively or financiallywith deep-pocketed competitors like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Apple TV+, and Disney+. Paramount+ aims to be a souped-up streaming machine delivering the bounty of ViacomCBS and its many brands, which include Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, and CBS. In its first several months, it stirred up some interest with reality TV originals (like an emotionally intense reunion of MTVs first cast of The Real World and a new season of RuPauls Drag Race All Stars), live sports (the UEFA Champions League), and kids programming (including a SpongeBob movie and an iCarly reboot). Netflix built its brand with word-of-mouth shows like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. Hulu won awards with The Handmaids Tale; Disney+ roared out of the gate with The Mandalorian; and Apple TV+ brandished The Morning Show and Dickinson as its calling cards. Meanwhile, Paramount+ launched without any marquee adult scripted premieres. It looked like the streamer had arrived at a gun fight with an empty holster. I view Paramount+ as a pretty weak offering, Jeff Wlodarczak, principal analyst at Pivotal Research Group, told me last month. It is not differentiated enough.  Last week, ViacomCBS reorganized the companys executive ranks to focus the companys top resources on Paramount+. David Nevins, the longtime CEO of Showtime and chief creative officer of CBS, was charged with overseeing scripted originals for Paramount+. His pedigree includes developing Showtime series like Homeland and The Affair, and he also had a hand in well-reviewed CBS All Access originals like the Star Trek series Picard and The Good Fight. But Nevins knows that theres a lot of pressure on to create shows that are going to stand out from the pack. The fundamental goal is to drive subscriptions, he says, either by keeping people whove already subscribed glued to the service, or causing them to want to sign up through buzz and media attention.  Just as the unscripted and kids side of Paramount+ is leaning heavily into franchises and reboots, Nevins says the scripted team is definitely focusing on a significant proportion of known quantities. Translation: They are ransacking ViacomCBSs closet for any vintage material worth resuscitating or reimagining. The Offer, a limited series about the making of The Godfather starring Miles Teller and Juno Temple, is going into production in the next few weeks, and a series based on Fatal Attraction is in active development. The Star Trek television universe will keep expanding with upcoming series like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and a Frasier revival is under discussion. Nevins gets especially excited talking about a musical spinoff of the movie Grease, centered on outcast girl gang the Pink Ladies. I think it has really real modern resonance and just a really fun poppy script, he says. Grease is the kind of thing that transcends generations...and how great would it be to have a new show that feels like it deals with some of the politics of being a teen today, but through the filter of the 50s?  One of the big questions surrounding Paramount+ was whether it would absorb BET and Showtimes own subscription streaming arms (BET+ and Showtime), the way that Hulu scooped up its sibling prestige cable network FX, and HBO Max incorporated HBO Go. No. The company will make it easier to bundle Paramount+ and Showtime in the next couple of months, however. He compares the situation to Disney, which keeps Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ as standalone services, but offers them together at a discount for those who want it all. We think theres a benefit in keeping them separate, Nevins says. That means Nevins sometimes has to sort out which productions belong on Showtime vs. Paramount+. Halo, an epic action series based on the Xbox video game franchise, was originally developed at Showtime, but will premiere on Paramount+ next year. The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, went the opposite way. As we were reading all the scripts, we felt like Halo was a big, broad, four-quadrant show, in the parlance of Hollywoodits young and old and male and female. It felt like it had a lot of potential and we said, Thats a show that can help take Paramount+ to the next level, Nevins recalls. And Man Who Fell to Earth we felt was more sophisticated, more adult in its themes and in its appeal, so we felt like that was more Showtime.