The streaming arms race has been one of the most defining pillars of Hollywood for the past 15 years. Netflix came onto the scene at a time when such a venture was the furthest thing from the mind of most studios, but the years since have seen countless imitators attempt to make a splash in the same space, with many of them failing. Now, almost every studio has its own streaming service (some, like Disney, have more than one!), even as a consolidation among those companies rears its ugly head, the streaming services remain a core part of their business.
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One of the streamers that has made a big splash, despite continuing to lose money, is Apple TV. Backed by the trillion-dollar valuation of the tech company, the streamer has made a name for itself in the genre space by allowing its shows to find an audience rather than just making a lot of shows and cancelling them just as fast. This past weekend saw the Season 5 premiere of Apple TV’s longest-running and best TV series, For All Mankind, and in the show’s opening minutes, it fired a shot at some of its fellow streaming services, revealing an alternate history in which Blockbuster remains supreme and Netflix is failing.
For All Mankind’s Alternate Timeline Erases Netflix From History
One of the best elements of any new season of For All Mankind is the opening montage that reveals what happened between the last season’s finale and the new story that we’re about to experience. Set in an alternate timeline where Russia beat the United States to the moon, For All Mankind is an alternate history that has a lot of fun with its “What if…” concepts. Given the decades-spanning storyline at play over the entire series, there’s a lot of ground to cover, but the series itself has now reached a point where it’s getting very close to our modern day.
With the Season 5 premiere of For All Mankind, there are a slew of distinct headlines that are used to fill in the gaps between the last season, most of them relevant to the larger plot, such as the aftermath of the Goldilocks heist, who won the presidential election in 2004 (it wasn’t incumbant Al Gore), and the arrival of refugees on Mars. Sprinkled in between these important plot machinations are bits about culture itself, revealing how different things really are, like how John Lennon (who did NOT die) swept the Grammys with Jay-Z thanks to their hit collaborative album, but also how the Montreal Expos are headed to Portland (rather than Washington D.C.). Another of these headlines reveals the success of the defunct video rental business, Blockbuster, which is not only thriving in the world of For All Mankind but also apparently outpacing its rivals from our timeline.
In a brief second, For All Mankind reveals that Blockbuster is about to expand its footprint and will open a store on the moon. The article reveals even more about Blockbuster’s plans, though, noting that the company has been profitable for the past four quarters (a distinct change from how history played out). Furthermore, it reveals that Blockbuster was purchased five years prior by FrameSkip, described as a holo-entertainment platform, which appears to be either a replacement for streaming or an entirely new way to watch movies and TV shows that does not exist in our world.
There’s also the reveal that Blockbuster is getting into the game of creating its own content. Very quickly, it’s revealed that by the end of the year, Blockbuster intends to release “one new original feature film and a premium scripted television series later this year,” later teasing that the show itself “is rumored to be set in the world of American politics.” Further than that, there’s a tease that Blockbuster is planning to expand to Mars too, something that fans can already see is happening with other brands on the red planet, as there’s a Domino’s franchise already present at Happy Valley.
As viewers may recall, the late 2000s were a rough time for Blockbuster, and a great time for Netflix, with the video store chain slowly losing any relevant ground culturally, and the streamer headed towards becoming the most dominant brand in the entire space. In the world of For All Mankind, though, Blockbuster appears to have fully maintained its place at the top of the movie rental pyramid and become so big that Netflix appears not even to exist. Even more distinct, though, is that Blockbuster is swallowing up any space that Netflix might have even taken up, including appearing to be the production company behind House of Cards (as the TV show set in American politics tease appears to imply).
There is one line, however, that complicates this a little bit, as a commentator makes a note that Blockbuster has done “something none of the streaming giants did.” What’s unclear from this blurry, half-visible line is what exactly it’s referring to, but it also implies that other streaming companies do exist. One wagers, however, that if Netflix is even one of them, it may be swallowed whole by Blockbuster. It’s worth adding that this line leaves open the potential for Apple TV to exist in the world of For All Mankind, since Apple itself is clearly still a company and is moving faster in terms of its released technology, thanks to the alternate history of the series. Maybe we’ll eventually see a headline about their hit TV show that ponders the question, “What if America won the race to the moon?”
