Netflix Plans To Spend $7 Billion On Content In 2018 (streamingobserver.com)

According to the Streaming Observer, Netflix plans to increase its budget by $1 billion dollars over the next year and spend over $7 billion on content in 2018. Previously, the company paid $6 billion in 2017 and $5 billion in 2016. From the report: While the internet freaks out about Disney ending its streaming agreement with Netflix, the company continues to forge ahead signing high-profile talent and throwing an enormous budget at its original programming. Just days after the Disney turmoil, Netflix's visionary Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos stated that the streaming leader plans to increase its budget by $1 billion dollars over the next year. As of now, Netflix currently has $15.7 billion in outstanding obligations in deals for new series and films over the next few years. With such an astronomically-large budget, media analysts are already beginning to wonder if Netflix is "rescuing" or "ruining" Hollywood by creating such a singular creator-producer-distributor model. Sarandos counters those claims, however, stating that Netflix is merely on the forefront of what's already a growing trend throughout the media industries: "I would say that the relationship between studios and networks has always been that of a frenemy. Everyone is doing some version of it already. They just have to make a decision for their companies, their brands and their shareholders on how to best optimize the content. We started making original content five years ago, betting this would happen."

Comments

Seriously who cares about Disney?

[SuperKendall]

Yes Disney has some nice content. But looking over things it's not that much compared to what I get from Netflix in terms of original programs...

Also the stuff from Disney tends to be in a certain style, while the Netflix content has been way more varied and differing in topic or target.

I wish Disney good fortune in striking out on their own but I wonder if these days they are as valuable a content commodity as they imagine themselves to be... especially with Netflix spending some percent of that money on original YA programming with more freedom of creative control than Disney is willing to give.

Re:Seriously who cares about Disney?

[Xest]

I don't like Disney, but the problem is they're hijacked so much culture now that it's hard to avoid them. This is precisely why Disney shouldn't be allowed to keep buying IPs - they're just too big.

They started out and grew by taking popular public domain stories, wrapping their own designs around them, then claiming them as their own, even suing people who then dare to try and make their own adaptations of the public domain content in some cases, thus effectively engaging in cultural theft.

But then they bought things like Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars with their ill gotten gains, so other major IPs are now controlled by them.

Any other purchase of media companies by Disney should be blocked as anti-competitive in any sane market. You can argue this would go against the free market, but Disney's whole existence has been about manipulating the market to their own advantage with frivolous lawsuits and IP law lobbying to bend the free market away from being free in the first place. In a free market free of IP law manipulation by the likes of Disney, 90% of Disney's IP would now be just as free for making derivative works of as the stories Disney created most their IP from in the first place.

Unfortunately even some of Netflix's originals are based on Disney IP, so Disney pulling out puts some of their best original content at risk. Disney is the too big to fail equivalent of the entertainment world, and if something is too big to fail it needs to be broken up until it's not.

is it?

[SuperDre]

Is it their budget only for content creation, or is it the budget for content creation AND buying licenses for 'old' content.
To me, Netflix is going in the wrong direction, it was a good idea of having all old series (and movies) in one place, but now they are becoming more and more a boring content creater like any other network and we still can't see all the great series from the past which are a lot of times much better than the crap that's put out today.

Don't cancel shows at cliffhangers

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they don't cancel too many shows when they turn interesting.

For example, "Defying Gravity" started out lame, but it got better. And the last episode was great - lots of momentum and "What will happen now?". And in that episode, the characters on the spaceship found out what the mission was about, and they reacted with astonishment and delight. And that was the last episode that was shown in the US! We (the US viewers) never found out what the mission was.

And the show "Alphas" ended on a cliffhanger. Everyone in Grand Central Station (or in NY City?) was killed, except Gary Bell, who was played by Ryan Cartwright. Cartwright is a terrific actor, and it looked like his character was going to save the world single-handedly. I was looking forward to seeing him do lots of acting to save the world in later episodes. But then I found out that that was the last episode, and that the show had been cancelled.

Grrr!!