Whomever said anything about them not wanting to see a return on their investment? Are you high?
I've said pages back that 'success' can only be measured by whatever Amazon decided they want to achieve with this series, on more than one occasion. Every time, you're jumping down my throat, because you lack the capacity to process information given to you further than the length of your own nose.
It's one thing to change something, it's an entirely different thing to change all but one director. You can't honestly say that this isn't a major shakeup.
No, it isn't. Parts of it are.
No, it just lost money. It fell behind what you should expect from a show that size and with that budget, but that doesn't make it a failure. Being 5th at the Olympics still means you were running with the best. You'll probably not be remembered, aside from Wikipedia. Just like this show.
First, they didn't prove anything. They just said sales spiked, which happens every time a book series is turned into a grand adaptation.
And seeing how there is no 'real deal' for the story they're trying to cobble together, I'm going to go ahead and say 'that's probably not the case'. It's more likely that people enjoyed what they saw and stretch their legs in the IP a bit. If they'll like the books coming from the series, that's a whole other story.
No, they can't. Amazon can take a financial hit and produce a show that loses them a shitton of money, but it has to financially pay off for them in the long run. I really don't get why people have the impression companies can do with their budget whatever the fuck they want.
Dude, you need to scale it back.
Again, no they can't. Amazon has responsibilities.
Would you happen to have a source for them being contractually obliged to make 5 seasons? As far as I know, they paid royalties for 5 seasons, they are commited to make 5 seasons, they want to make 5 seasons, but if that's actually the case, we'll see.
Season 3 not being greenlit is not a good sign, though. Probably means they'll renegotiate and restructure some more.
Compared to themselves. You know, if you want to dissect what they said and try to get an idea of how well the show performed, you should put some effort in. Otherwise you'll appear dishonest.
And they are not talking about the first episode only, either. Minutes watched etc. doesn't tell us much, but you can devide it by total runtime and get an aproximation of how many instances of streaming the show got.
As a general rule of thumb, I'd reccomend you to not try and interpret this wildly. There's a number of reasons why people put off subscribing to watch shows, seeing how the prelude to Xmas is usually disproportionally busy. Not everyone can afford staying subbed 24/7/365, and people pick the holiday season, because for many that means extra time off. There's probably a decent chunk of people who put off subbing to watch the show, and timed it to coincide with holiday shopping. It's probably not the only reason they subbed, but it probably was a contributing factor.
And the book sales most definitely spiked because of the show. Because of the show, mind you, not because of the show's success. Increased sales contribute to the show's success. That's a difference.