When the news broke that Netflix was once again raising its subscription price, it was evident that the streaming giant had big plans in the works to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Over the past few years, Netflix has been going all-in on their original content slate, and, from the sounds of things, that is going to continue in a major way. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings addressed the price hike by saying “price is all relative to value. We’re continuing to increase the content offering and we’re seeing that reflected in viewing around the world.”
CFO David Wells claimed that these price increases have been in the works for a while, as a natural progression for the company. “This has been planned for a long time and we’re sort of growing, slowly growing and planning the business steadily, so we’ve assumed we’re going to grow ASP (average selling price) slowly over time and we’re taking the content up with that as well.” They are indeed taking up the content, planning on spending between $7 and $8 billion on content alone in 2018. However, they’re going to need every penny: According to Variety, Netflix is planning on releasing 80 original films in 2018.
While their planned films will range in size from Sundance indie types to big budget movies more in line with David Ayer’s $90 million sci-fi film, Bright. Even so, that is an astronomical number. For reference, Universal will release a total 0f 14 movies in 2017, 20th Century Fox will release 13, and Warner Brothers will lead the pack of heavy hitters with 21.
So far, Netflix original films have ranged from the very good Okja to the very bad Death Note, so be prepared to wade through the upcoming content rush with a critical eye.
