This is incredibly interesting — knowing what kind of content your audience is going to be eager to watch before you create it can easily be the single biggest Hollywood dream. And Netflix is living it.

“What Netflix found was that their subscribers really enjoyed political dramas. They also knew that movies starring Kevin Spacey or directed byDavid Fincher (Fight Club) seemed to be very popular and highly rated. Using this data intelligence, the company that was in the movie delivery business launched into the movie making business and developed its first exclusive show.”

The result? For the first time, the video subscription service surpasses HBO in number of domestic subscribers. You can read the article where the quote above is from here.