NETFLIX Pitch || How to make Series Bible for pitching.

10 min readNov 1, 2018

I have worked on several bibles for pitching, and the word “Bible” here does not mean the religious Christian text, the Bible in the ‘Content Creation World’ is a document which tells an Executive everything about that particular Story or Content.

It can cover as many topics as the author wants in the Index but it generally includes these following topics as a must:-

A Brief Synopsis — Detailed outline of the story event by event. To be more detailed — “The typical synopsis consists of a plot summary of the screenplay on one side of a sheet of paper and usually contains no more than 400 words. A good synopsis a very good tool to help writers develop an idea for a screenplay and eventual movie. A synopsis does not try to tell the whole story”
Character Arc — How the character’s behaviour and personality are changing in the series or throughout the story. To be more detailed — “A character arc is a transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to changing developments in the story.”
Story Arc — How is the story is changing its narrative to bring twists in order to change the direction of the story in an interesting manner. To be more detailed — “A story arc (also narrative arc) is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes.”
Character breakdown — “They are brief descriptions of characters — distillations from a script or treatment — used to help agents or the reader to determine what is the character, how many characters and how that character looks and behaves.”.
Episode break down — Breaking down the entire story in to for example ten episodes so that the reader would know how each episode will look like. Every episode in a series is a complete story in itself with continuous circumstances and characters. Vince Gilligan divided every episode into three structure and mentioned how using those three structures, the entire narrative will move forward. Check out the “Breaking Bad” Bible to learn.
Brief Summary of every Episode — It is not very necessary, but it would be good if you could divide the episodes in ten or whatever episodes you want to divide and then write brief summaries about it, just for an idea. Remember — Never make it in details or it becomes boring to read because the reader has already gone through the synopsis.
Twist in every episode (highlight it) — If you are writing a thriller, suspense, drama or horror, you will always need a hookup point to greed audience into watching the next episode. Mention those twists in the highlight in the episode summaries, it will help tremendously. If there are more than two endings or twists, mention that too.
Look and Feel — This is one of the most important factors that most people ignore in the creative field. Look and feel is one section on which the entire Advertising Agency is relying on. You take out the pictures of references of the similar themes that match your story and you present your story with the help of those images so as to give the reader a much more clear idea of what the final look will look like — nearly.
Marketing Ideas — Most Bibles do not have this section but few of them do. If you have not idea about it then skip it completely. But if you have some cool ideas for marketing your series, do write them down. However, never put them in an authoritative manner telling them what they should do but write them as suggestions. No one likes to take orders.
Future Potential of the series — This is a must. To understand the gravity of this point, read this — “There are chances that the executive will be reading this just to know if the series becomes hit then whether they can create more episodes out of it or not”. Every series needs to have future potential. It can be a character continuation like “Sherlock” or it can be a thematic continuation like “American Horror Story”.

Normally it is this but you can always be creative and go bonkers on ideas on how you want to pitch your concept to the Executive.

I have worked with a company that used to pitch and sell non-fiction reality-based shows to other countries and they would sometimes go to the extent of making the Bible of more than 300 pages. They never showed it to me because I was in a different field in that company but my habit of nosing everywhere led me to this information. It was the first time that I came to know about the “Bible”.

Anyways, my history is not relevant here, what matters is how to create a Bible and pitch it to executives.

Here are my experiences which will help you in pitching.

Instead of writing them in paragraphs I am going to write a few things as pointers which you must consider while pitching your concept.

A lot of people call me, confusing me as someone from NETFLIX and ask me to set up a meeting but I have no NETFLIX connections as I never worked there. I worked from a distance for other people. On one hand, since I am not working there, I can’t do set meetings, on the other hand, I know how to do so, however, the process is a little tedious.
Contact a Talent agency and pitch it through them.
Create a great profile on LinkedIn and generate contacts through it.
Be in touch with someone who already has worked in NETFLIX and pitch through them by making them a partner in your concept.
NETFLIX takes content directly from agencies instead of individuals. Try to approach an agency for the same. Tulsea is one such company. Tulsea is also content management and talent agencies which can help you.
Don’t approach anyone till you have your Bible ready and if possible the first episode of the series. The first episode screenplay is not that necessary but a great bible is a must.
Don’t waste money making a teaser, trailer or first episode. No one wants to watch it anymore. Also, it gives a feeling that you are adamant on your concept. Executives would like to make changes to the concept to fit their own channels. Be ready for that, so be flexible and a good listener.
Never give the impression that you are too rigid to change the concept. While dealing with a company always be suggestive, not authoritative and tight, but don’t bend too much or they will think that you are not sure about your concept. You need to have answers for their questions like why something was added or not added to the story. Be honest and be confident while pitching. Confidence and conviction in the concept matter more than anything else. In the battle of Ego and Logic, go with Logic.
The more effort you will put in your concept, more will be the chances of it getting selected, or at least be considered. It also needs to be sown on the bible. Show your research or bibliography or inspirations as introductions.
Remember, companies like NETFLIX are not sitting there to reject you but they are sitting there to do great business with great content. If your concept is workable, they will select it, otherwise not. Don’t take it personally. For some reasons, once you will pitch a concept and it is rejected, it will never be approved again (unless some external force is applied). So don’t repitch the same concept to the same company, it is insulting. Again shred ego and pitch it to someone else.
Association with big names is beneficial. If you have big names behind you, you will get more chances of your stuff getting selected there. For eg., there is a show called Khan №.1 which is unlike any other show on NETFLIX; it is not good but NETFLIX bought it. Now the producer of the show is Rohan Sippy so you know why they bought it ( it was however before Sacred Games and they were greedily buying Indian content for database sake). They also bought Shlok Sharma’s ‘Zoo’ which was shot on iPhone 6 ( he is a great filmmaker though) and which does not even have that market. Why? He is a close associate of Anurag Kashyap. They mention it on their website that they will only approve the shows shot on 4K or above, yet they keep making exceptions. I don’t know what strategy NETFLIX executives are following, but these two content seems odd among other content that I have seen.
The journey of NETFLIX can be divided into two parts, before Sacred Games and after Sacred Games. Before Sacred Games, they were not the major player and every competitor like Amazon, ALT Balaji was competing against them head to head. Amazon and Alt Balaji does not understand the Indian market at any level but NETFLIX is good in that. They were researching and trying hard to understand Indian Market, they played a gamble and it well played off. Before Sacred Games, they were taking contents in bulk but after Sacred Games, they are back to being arrogant, and rightly so, like they are in the US and now they have immense craze among people. They follow a simple rule — great content creates a great following.
Before finalizing on the content, do some market research. Try to find out what kind of content is liked by people in the general market. I met an old filmmaker once who kept insisting about making a show on Ghalib where people are reading old shayaris in mehfil. He kept coming to my office daily to pitch that concept to me. He was thinking of making the concept to fulfil his creative pursuits but if your content looks like it will not bring any profits then no one will buy it. Once you write a good concept, it becomes a product and now think like a businessman to sell it.
Here I am giving you a screenshot directly from NETFLIX website which clearly states that they do not consider unsolicited content. Truth is, no production house or content creator is open for unsolicited content, probably because of lawsuits. So if you are dreaming that one day you will write your concept and submit it to them and they will give you loads of money to make it, then — No, that is not going to happen.

For great tricks of pitching, Watch Shonda Rhimes Masterclass where she teaches practical methods of pitching from her own experiences. Some really great stuff there and I simply love it.

No matter what, don’t stop yourself from dreaming. Prepare a bible and find an agency as there are hundreds of agencies in Mumbai who are pitching to NETFLIX every day. Work hard on the Bible, that’s the first step. With a great concept in hands, more doors will be open for you.

For the Bible, here are a few good bibles that I found on the internet which you should also go through before you start making your own bible.

Stranger_Things_-_Bible — This bible has been made with great visuals and great background. It already gives you a look of the series that you are going to see. Very concise, imaginative and to the point. It was not “Strange Things” initially, do check it out, it is very interesting.

Breaking Bad — Do you know that Vince Gilligan thought that Hank will be the most popular character in the series and Gus will be the main villain, throughout the series. This bible, I loved, because of its sense of humour, very detailed structure and it’s writing. It is done in a manner which when you read, it appears that Vince is directly talking to you.

These two are my favourite along with Grey’ Anatomy by Shonda Rhimes and True Detective by Nic Pizzolato.

Here are some more for you to read, learn and make great bibles. (Click on the link to open or download)