OPEN LETTER TO NETFLIX (AND ANY PLATFORM WITH THE POWER TO PRESERVE HISTORY)

Save 50+ Years of LGBTQ+ Cinema — Before It Disappears Forever
To Netflix — or any platform with the reach, resources, and responsibility to act,

Netflix is acquiring Warner Bros — which means: its about to own Queer as Folk (US).

Yes — that Queer as Folk. One of the most influential, profitable, and groundbreaking LGBTQ+ shows ever made.

But if that’s all you acquire, you’ll be holding one iconic show in isolation — with no access to the queer cinematic foundation it was built upon.

We’re asking Netflix or any other platform to do something no other platform has done …. yet 

Preserve and stream the LGBTQ+ film archives currently held by legacy distributors — before they disappear forever.These companies hold over 6,000 titles — the largest, oldest collection of LGBTQ+ cinema in existence. Yet most viewers have no idea they exist. Their servers are outdated. Their content is hard to find. They still print sell and ship DVDs in 4k in 2026 that should make anyone sit up straight and take notice 

If even one of them folds, decades of LGBTQ+ media history could vanish overnight. Not with a bang but a whisper The archive exists. It works. It’s digitized. It’s proven.

l TLA Video / TLA Releasing (founded 1981)

l Wolfe Video (founded 1985)

l Peccadillo Pictures (founded 2000)

l Here TV (founded 2002)

l OUTtv, Dekkoo, Revry (2000s–2010s)

As of 2025, platforms like Dekkoo, Here TV, and OUTtv have an estimated 4 million global subscribers — despite outdated tech and limited access.

 

Now For The Numbers what CEO's care about 

The Overall DVD/Blu-ray Market (2015-2025)

· 2015: $8.9 billion in Physical sales

· 2024: $0.96 billion (below $1 billion for the first time)

· 2025  $0.72 billion

· Total collapse: 92% decline in 10 years

· 2024 alone: Market dropped 66.9% year-over-year (the steepest collapse ever recorded)

But the LGBTQ+ DVD Sales Are Not Included in Stats (2024-2025)

· LGBTQ Titles +25% year-over-year GROWTH

This growth happened and is still happening while the overall market collapses 66.9% in 2024 this is due to one thing when you cut off 6000+ Movies and shows from Streaming people will find a way to watch them

When the overall market lost two-thirds of its value in 12 months—LGBTQ+ audiences increased their spending by 15-25%. What This Proves: While the public abandoned DVDs for streaming, LGBTQ+ audiences are buying MORE because streaming platforms don't have the content they want.

This isn't a dying market—it's a market streaming hasn't entered.Wolfe Video physical sales: $3-9M annually (60% of $5-15M total revenue) TLA Releasing physical sales: $3-6M annually theses companies do not publicly disclose sales I had to dig deep to find these stats 

The $4.7 Trillion Reality Check
The global LGBTQ+ community is estimated to represent approximately $4.7 trillion in annual purchasing, based on market analyses conducted from the early 2010s through 2019, and reaffirmed in industry reports through 2023–2024. After basic living costs are removed, this leaves $1.8–2 trillion per year in discretionary spending — the same economy Streaming services already operates within.

Netflix The Biggest Subscriber Base: 301.6M+
LGBTQ+ Viewers (5–10%): 15–30M+
Global ARPU: $140.40/year+

If Netflix saves just 20% of LGBTQ+ Titles out of 6000+ 

What Netflix Gets:

· Titles spanning 50+ years Most in 4K 

· Content with 70-90% completion rates (vs streaming 20-35%)

· Audience’s that have already spent millions on DVDs this year

· Thousands of trailers already on Online

· A market that's growing +25% year on year 

· Zero production risk and low cost (content already exists and it works)

· Algorithm-ready content (fits existing recommendation patterns) 

· Cultural leadership (Where queer cinema lives) 

· Permanent PR value (beyond Pride Month marketing)

· $421M–912M yearly profit 

· 4M+ new subscribers (converting physical collectors into digital )

· One-Time Cost $10–50M ( Full licensing/Break-even: Year One Pure profit every year after )

The Cost to Netflix IF you take on this idea the numbers its roughly 0.6% to 1% annual profit The Reality for Less than ( Jupiter's Legacy ) a cost of $200 Million buys you permanent catalogue that cannot fail, cannot disappoint, and already has proven audience loyalty over decades.

· Option 1: Long-term streaming rights: $5-30 M 

· Option 2: Exclusive control (15-25 years): $10-30 M

· Option 3: Buy multiple companies outright: $50-85 million

This is library economics, not blockbuster gambling No script risk, No talent risk, No marketing risk, No cancellation risk

THE COMPETITIVE MOAT ARGUMENT

Disney can’t move fast here — they’re trapped in legacy contracts spread across Fox, Searchlight, and decades of fragmented rights.

Amazon already tried — their Dekkoo deal fell flat. Why? Because it requires stacking subscriptions: £8.99 for Prime, £7.99 for Dekkoo, and you still have to rent or buy most films individually.

Apple TV+ is focused entirely on high-end originals, not building out deep archival libraries.

If Netflix — or any platform with the foresight — acts now, this becomes a competitive moat no rival can easily cross. One move. Zero risk. And a 50-year content lead no one else can duplicate overnight.

QUEER AS FOLK: THE CORNERSTONE

Netflix is about to own Warner Bros..
That means Netflix is about to own Queer as Folk (US) — the first American television series to unapologetically center gay lives, and still one of the most important LGBTQ+ shows ever made.

But we don’t think you fully grasp what you’re sitting on.

This is NOT a letter asking you to add one legacy title to a catalogue and move on.

Queer as Folk aired on Showtime from 2000–2005. It sparked backlash, rewired television, and helped define an entire generation of queer storytelling.

Revenue (original run): $130–260M
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

And here’s the part that should make you sit up straight:

It is still selling in 2026.
Amazon DVD rank: 34,202 — top 2% of all DVDs.

Context matters here. Most DVDs older than a decade rank in the millions, meaning they almost never sell. This is not dead stock. This is an active seller. 3,879 minutes - 83 episodes - 24 discs

Every data point says the same thing: this isn’t just a “good” seller.
It’s a signal.

This is the definitive archive — still pulling demand 25 years later.

And none of this was safe.

When it aired, major advertisers refused to buy spots.
Religious groups protested outside Showtime offices.
Headlines called it “pornographic,” “immoral,” “a threat to American values.”

When it aired on Channel 4 in the UK, it received 160+ formal complaints to regulators after a single episode.

And yet—it thrived.

Because audiences showed up.
Because they had nowhere else to go.

Two decades later, they still don’t.

When today’s viewers finish Queer as Folk, the story stops.

Not because there’s nothing left to watch 
but because the algorithm can’t lead them backward or forward through queer history.

There is no bridge. No lineage. No context.

Because You Watched… → You Might Have Missed

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

→ Dante’s Cove (2005)
A gothic romance wrapped in ghosts, repression, and doomed love.
Small-town witchcraft, demons, secret societies — and openly queer leads long before streaming dared.

Notable cast

Tracy Scoggins (Babylon 5)

William Gregory Lee

Gregory Michael

IMDb: 5.8/10

Heartstopper (2022)

→ Latter Days (2004)
A gentle modern coming-out story meets its spiritual ancestor.
A romance between a waiter and a Mormon missionary, navigating faith, shame, desire, and consequence.

Notable cast

Steve Sandvoss

Wes Ramsey (Charmed)

Jacqueline Bisset

Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Awards & legacy - Multiple LGBTQ+ festival Audience Awards

Rotten Tomatoes: 78%

Chernobyl (2019)

→ Angels in America (2003)
Political collapse. Bodies paying the price.
AIDS-era America, angels, mortality — and truth when governments lie while heaven itself starts to fracture.

Notable cast

Al Pacino

Meryl Streep

Emma Thompson

Patrick Wilson

Awards 11 Emmy wins - Golden Globe for Best Miniseries

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Scary Movie (1–5)
→ Not Another Gay Movie
Teen-movie parody turned cult queer comedy.
A film that knew the joke, trusted its audience, and went gleefully feral.

Notable cast

Jonah Blechman ( Dawson’s Creek )

Graham Norton

John Epperson ( Black Swan )

Scott Thompson (Star Trek)

IMDb: 5.0/10

NOW FOR A SAD STORY AND A REAITLY CHECK 

Wicked Winters Films, a UK-based independent lesbian production company, has built its catalogue through self-funding and crowdfunding, relying directly on community support to survive.

No studio backing.
No safety net.

Peccadillo Pictures, one of the UK’s most important LGBTQ+ film distributors, lost its London office and archive in a fire during the 2011 UK riots.

Years of work 
physical media, materials, infrastructure — gone overnight.

No redundancy.
No cloud backup.
No institutional safety net.

When small queer distributors collapse, burn, or go bankrupt,
there is no second copy waiting somewhere else.

PROVING CULTURAL ERASURE: THE 200-PERSON TEST

To measure how far we’ve drifted from our own history, I asked 200 people gay and straight, friends, coworkers, family, strangers aged 18 to 92 a simple question:

Had they heard of all three of these names?

Only 15 out of 200 had.

Matthew Shepard

Brutally murdered in 1998, his death led directly to US federal hate crime legislation.
His story dominated global news for years and inspired multiple films and plays.
Today, it is largely absent from major streaming platforms.

Divine

A foundational drag icon who reshaped queer performance culture.
Died in 1988.
The documentary I Am Divine holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score — and is now mostly available only on DVD.
If Divine were alive today, they would not be underground. They would be mainstream and the host of Drag Race. 

Milk

Won 2 Oscars with 8 nominations.
Tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, assassinated in 1978 after just 11 months in office.
A landmark civil-rights story — increasingly invisible to new audiences.

That’s not a generational failure.
That’s a platform failure.

These stories aren’t being rejected.
They’re out of print, locked away, or unrecommended.

History isn’t being taught —
and it isn’t being streamed.

So it’s being lost.

1980s: The AIDS crisis.
Being openly gay could cost you everything — your job, your family, sometimes your life.
Tell someone that in 2026 and they’d think you were exaggerating.

1990s (UK): Section 28.
Schools weren’t allowed to “promote homosexuality.”
In real life, that meant something much simpler and much crueler.

You were told to shut up.
You were taken into dark rooms with teachers and warned to stay quiet I should know I lived it.

That wasn’t guidance.
That was fear 

2000s: Queer as Folk broke through anyway.
There were protests outside TV studios.
Tabloids calling it dangerous.
Cast and creators dragged onto shows like Larry King to defend why gay people were allowed on television at all It was a cultural fight — and it won.

2026: Gender is understood as a spectrum.
They/them pronouns are normal.
Conversations that once got you punished are now everyday language.

Society moved fast.
But the history of what we were forced to survive didn’t come with us.

And when that history isn’t preserved, it doesn’t just fade —
it gets erased.

WHAT WE CELEBRATE - Pride Month

Today, platforms highlight hits like:
Heartstopper, Young Royals, Q Force, Queer Eye, Pose, Smiley & Others

These shows matter. They’re embraced. They’re visible. They make money 

But they stand on the shoulders of what came before.

Every LGBTQ+ person knows what Pride Month has become:
A logo. A slogan. A rainbow filter. Then it ends.

Netflix already celebrates LGBTQ+ stories.
But Representation is not the same as archive.

We’re not asking you to make queer history.
We’re asking you to keep it.

THE FINAL WORD

LGBTQ+ cinema is quietly disappearing.

The archive exists. It works. It’s digitized. It’s proven.

It just needs a permanent home.

You’ve made hits.
Now make history.
Be the platform that didn’t forget us.

WHO I AM

I’m a 41-year-old gay man in rural England Born 1984 I have no stake in any of these companies.

I rediscovered Wolfe, TLA, and Peccadillo after 15 years and was stunned to find they’re still shipping DVDs in 2026 because they were never let into streaming.

I remember paying £90 one DVD in the early 2000s because it was the only way to see myself on screen. 

20+ years later That’s still true.

My friends don’t own DVD players. They don’t even know these films exist.

That’s how history dies — not with a bang, but with a whisper.

This letter shines a light 
If you believe queer stories deserve a home, add your name.

Respectfully,
A viewer who believes queer history deserves to survive and thrive

Now Breath!