Netflix Messenger
/ An (unrealized) video messenging service using dialogue snippets extracted from movies, commissioned by Netflix
/ 2015
/ Data Poetics
Netflix Messenger was a proposed project that would allow users to send video messages to one another using dialogue snippets taken from movies.
Users would type their message into a text field, optionally specifying movie type preferences such as westerns, fantasies, rom/coms, or black and white. The system would automatically scan a vast database of movie subtitle and timecode data, assembling a montage of clips from multiple sources based on the specified message. The resulting montage could then be sent to a friend.
Netflix loved the proposal, but their legal team was unable to secure the necessary rights (Netflix is only licensed to offer movies in full, but not to cut them into snippets), so the idea was abandoned.