It has been revealed by Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos that the company has the intention to release 80 original movies in 2018. This will be a big jump compared to the 50 movies that are released or scheduled for release in 2017 and are considered Netflix original.
“They range anywhere from the million-dollar Sundance hit, all the way up to something on a much larger scale” – said Sarandos.
Netflix already started to produce those larger scale movies and they have a potential to be hugely successful. One of those movies is Bright, that had a $90 million budget and stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. Also, Netflix is producing the Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, which reportedly had a cost of $100 million.
The plan to release 80 movies next year is in pair with Netflix’ long-term strategy to have more original content. Previously, the company announced that they aim to have at least 50% of their own content in the library in the following years.
“Our future largely lies in exclusive original content that drives both excitement around Netflix and enormous viewing satisfaction for our global membership and its wide variety of tastes” the company said in the letter to shareholders.
The company recently announced increase of subscription prices for the United States and several other markets, so many people believed that is a way for Netflix to keep up with spending on originals. Although those efforts will cost a lot of money, the company denied there is any correlation between raising subscription prices and increasing amount of original content. Despite the prices going up, Netflix added $5 million new subscribers in the last quarter.
