Anil Kapoor, Yami Gautam, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui pitch in to promote Netflix’s free weekend-long StreamFest

You know something’s off when Anil Kapoor fills in as a replacement for your date, Yami Gautam takes the place of a mom at a kid’s open house at school, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui comforts a lady while she gives birth at a hospital because the husband couldn’t be there.

The answer to these strange circumstances is pretty simple: Netflix StreamFest where all the missing people are. Yes, the streaming giant has announced it will open its fabled locked (read subscriber only) doors to everyone for free on the 5th and the 6th of December 2020.

Netflix, on its website, said, “That’s right, it’s time to cancel your plans and settle in to watch Netflix. We don’t need any payment details–just your love and undivided attention.”

Gregory K. Peters, Netflix’s COO and chief product officer had echoed this thought during Netflix's third-quarter earnings call on October 20, 2020: “… we think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have, the service, how the service works, really create an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up. So, we're going to try that in India, and we'll see how that goes…”

It’s an interesting move because earlier this year, Netflix ended its complimentary one-month free offering and now we see it offer only a free weekend. Adding to this, this experiment will be tested in India where the streamer had earlier tested a mobile-only subscription plan priced at Rs 199 per month before taking it to other countries.

This free weekend-long access comes at a time when Netflix’s subscription rate has dipped. It missed its subscription forecast of 2.5 million and gained only 2.2 million new subscribers in Q3. It had added 10.1 million subscribers in Q2 and 15.8 million in Q1.