Brazen is just one of the 225 novels from Nora Roberts, an acclaimed American author (her novels had spent a combined 861 weeks on the N.Y. Times Bestseller list). Usually, her books are adapted for network stations like Lifetime and Hallmark as cheap Made-for-TV movies. Netflix bought Brazen from production company Mandalay and there obviously were a lot of fans of Nora Roberts’ work among the target audience. Every Christmas we can see that Netflix is exploiting the same strategy as the Hallmark TV channel and others – showering viewers with as many Christmas romance movies as possible. It mostly works, despite the horrible reviews, some titles are making decent numbers. Brazen got only 17 % on Rotten Tomatoes and 3.9/10 on IMDb, but it is still the number one Netflix movie globally for four days in a row.
Can we expect more Nora Roberts novels to be turned into movies now? There is a LOT of material there, with more than two hundred books and many many more written under different pseudonyms. We wouldn’t worry about Netflix turning into a soapy TV channel, but with a subscriber base this big, Netflix has to offer something for everyone. And Brazen certainly caters to a lot of eyeballs along with a rising number of reality shows that Netflix is producing right now.