Watching a father of two dangle off the side of one of the world’s tallest buildings may sound like a nightmare to some – but to others, it’s must-see TV.
Thankfully for Netflix, millions fell into the latter category for “Skyscraper Live,” the Jan. 25 special that saw “Free Solo” star climber Alex Honnold scale the Taiwan skyscraper Taipei 101 without ropes.
In its first week on the streamer, “Skyscraper Live” garnered over 6.2 million views, and a whopping 850 million global impressions across Netflix social platforms.
Alex Alex Honnold attends the screening of “Free Solo” at the 2018 LA Film Festival at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on September 27, 2018 in Beverly Hills. Getty Images for Film Independen
So how did the team pull off a true zeitgeist-capturing, death-defying broadcast?
“It’s a WTF, right? We love those kind of moments at Netflix. Those are what break through,” Jeff Gaspin, VP of unscripted series tells Page Six Hollywood. “I didn’t look at this as a sporting event, necessarily. I looked at this as an adventure event.”
“Skyscraper Live” host Elle Duncan, who recently became Netflix’s first contracted on-air hosts for sports and live events, says she felt the eyes of the world on the stream, knowing many were anticipating the worst-case scenario. “There’s going to be a certain amount of attention that’s just based on, ‘What is this crazy man doing? Is he going to fall off this building?’ That is the drama and the theater,” she says.
Planning for the streamer’s first international live event began months in advance, ensuring “Skyscraper Live” wasn’t just about a feat of athleticism, but a technical marvel as well.
Netflix employed 150 crew members including locals, using 19 different camera sources and running nearly 5 miles of cable for the project.
And with a man’s life on the line, they weren’t just checking their Weather app like us normies: “We actually employ meteorologists who can really look at the charts and really tell us the weather patterns,” Gaspin says. Those reports resulted in the stream being pushed from Friday to Saturday, due to rain that would make the climb unsafe for Honnold.
But once conditions were finally deemed optimal for the climb, Gaspin says there were two sets of contingency plans: one private, on-site plan relating to the protection and privacy of Honnold’s family, and another for the broadcast (which ran on a 10-second delay for that very reason). “‘What are we going to show? What are we going to say?’ We just made the very simple decision that if, God forbid, something happened, we would just cut away within that 10-second timeframe, to either a wide shot of the building … or we could have cut to the desk where Elle would have said something like, ‘Something’s gone wrong. We’re going to end our broadcast for now. Please pray for Alex,’ ” he reveals. “Nothing more than that – then it becomes a news story.”
Alex Honnold with his wife and child. sannimccandless/Instagram
Duncan had that contingency statement written on a card, which she kept nestled in her lap for the entire stream as a “reminder of the stakes” of Honnold’s climb. “We all had a lot of confidence in Alex,” she tells Page Six Hollywood. “But what if there was an earthquake? What if a storm came in? There were just a lot of intangibles and extenuating circumstances outside of his control that led to this idea that this man’s life is actually at stake in front of everyone. And certainly you wonder, if it was to happen and you have to sort of be the face of it, how do you handle it with the delicacy that’s required, with the tone that’s required?”
Thankfully, none of those plans came to light, as Honnold successfully scaled the building in just over 90 minutes. That feat has spurred on even more viewers watching the full stream post-release with the knowledge that it won’t result in tragedy, Gaspin says. “There’s a lot of people who didn’t have the heart or the stomach to watch it live, not knowing how it would end.” The numbers prove he’s right: Page Six Hollywood can exclusively reveal that “Skyscraper Live” has landed in Netflix’s Top 10 again on its second week, securing an additional 5.3 million views – and proving it was never just about the life-or-death stakes.
“I hope what [Honnold] did was inspire people: this man is willing to put his life on the line in front of the world in pursuit of something that he has always wanted to do. And we got to witness someone who finally saw a dream come true. But also we got to witness one of the greatest athletic feats of all time, from a person who is humble and chill – afterward, he went to the hotel buffet and had some food with his cameraman,” Duncan says with a laugh. “He is a remarkable, wonderful person who lives a remarkable life. But I think his message to everyone is that you don’t have to be remarkable to do remarkable things. If you work hard, if you focus and if you really, really, really try to push yourself outside of your limitations, you can accomplish incredible things, and we witnessed him do it.”
Events like “Skyscraper Live” are exactly what coaxed Duncan to join the streamer – while she won’t be reporting daily on WNBA games like she once did, she now will front events less frequently, but with a much higher impact. “The tried and true sports fan is gonna tune in no matter what,” she says. “But I think what’s cool about Netflix is that they’re always trying to approach shows for people that are interested in spectacle, like a big event. You don’t have to watch 162 games of baseball to enjoy Netflix’s Opening Night or Home Run Derby or the ‘Field of Dreams’ game. They only choose major events that really cross the spectrum.”