Vox Media Studios Execs on Netflix-Focused ‘Land of the Giants’ Finale, Plans for CNN+ Docuseries’ Linear Rollout

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe finale of CNN+’s “Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech,” titled “The Netflix Effect,” launches Thursday, perfect timing for an entertainment industry that is both reeling amid Netflix’s shocking Q1 subscriber miss, poor second-quarter outlook and the wait to see if CNN+ can find its groove as quickly as it might need to in order to survive.Based on the “Land of the Giants” podcast from Vox Media’s Recode, the CNN+ docuseries explores the complicated histories of Meta (a.k.a.

Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Google and now Netflix. The final episode focuses on Netflix’s origins and its founder and CEO Reed Hastings, who on Tuesday revealed he is finally open to creating a lower-priced, ad-supported option for the streaming service, which lost 200,000 subscribers by the end of March.

Vox Media Studios president Marty Moe and chief creative officer of Vox Media Studios Chad Mumm, told Variety this deep-dive into Netflix on the “Land of the Giants” podcast was what sold the TV adaptation to CNN.“This was in the middle of the pandemic, and the Netflix episodes of the podcast came out,” Mumm said. “Within a week, I got calls from two different networks, one of which was CNN, with the programming exec saying, ‘Our CEO listened to the Netflix episode and said, we should make a TV show about this.'”At that time, the CEO of CNN was the now-ousted Jeff Zucker, who has been succeeded by Chris Licht at the media giant owned by WarnerMedia, which recently merged with Discovery to create Warner Bros.