Nicole LaPorte writes in Fast Company that Netflix has benefited from Hollywood's paranoid vision of it as "the red menace from Silicon Valley." As one observer said, "Nobody knows what the hell is going on inside Netflix. And that's the way Netflix likes it." The company's image as an outside force "gives it a cachet."

But Netflix is doing more than threatening HBO--what really has Hollywood worried is that the company seems in a hurry to redefine the very rules of the entertainment industry. Its willingness to sign up shows for entire seasons without first ordering a pilot (the one-shot episodes that TV honchos have for decades demanded before backing a show) has forced network executives to rethink a system that has defined television since its inception. And as the company has rolled out House of Cards, season four of Arrested Development, and Orange Is the New Black, Netflix's stock has soared--it almost quadrupled between January and Thanksgiving 2013. "There have only been a half-dozen shows," gripes one media executive, "and yet to read the press and hear the comments, you would think Netflix had found the cure for cancer."