news culture What if the big winner from the strike crippling Hollywood was Netflix? The competition will have a hard time keeping up…
For several months, the American audiovisual entertainment industry has been at a standstill due to the writers’ strike, which has recently been joined by actors. While the big studios risk suffering the consequences in the years to come, Netflix appears to be better protected than the rest, we explain why.
Hollywood screenwriters have been on strike since May to demand higher wages, an increase in producers’ profit share and a fight against the use of artificial intelligence in their work. Actors joined the movement after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, ended. From now on, All production in Hollywood will be shut down, which will have a major impact on films and series for years to come. But for all that, one of the big players in the audiovisual entertainment space seems to be doing well: Netflix.
A successful strategy for Netflix
For comparison, it is obvious that the series and films planned for 2024 and 2025 that are currently in production will be affected by this strike. This is the case of Gladiator 2, Mortal Kombat 2 or even season 4 of Emily in Paris, the shooting of which was already underway or should start in the coming months. All these works apparently have in common that they were written by American screenwriters and contain American actors, which means that their production cannot continue due to the strike. It may seem silly to point this out, but This ruling does not affect American productions, which means the rest of the world is unaffected. And this is where Netflix comes out on top.
For years, the streaming giant has been producing its content worldwide with local teams, both in front of and behind the camera. In France we know this only too well with series and shows like Lupin, Family Business, Nouvelle École… Internationally, there are even some of the biggest hits on the platform like Squid Game, Dark or even Elite. It must be said that Netflix has also made it a habit to buy the rights to shows that only air locally in certain countries, in order to offer them a sequel like “La Casa de Papel” or “Black Mirror”. years later, Thanks to these international strategic decisions, Netflix is less affected by the writers’ and actors’ strike in Hollywood than its competitors. Among them we find the decision to invest more than $2.5 billion in the production of Korean content and to help finance French cinema for 4% of its annual net sales in France. The streaming giant could thus further expand its lead over the competition, for which streaming is less and less an Eldorado.
The end of the streaming Eldorado?
Take the case of Disney+: The streaming platform has been losing momentum for some time, with confirmation of a decline in its subscriber base in recent months. To compensate for this drop, Mickey’s company decided to remove 58 films and series from the platform starting May 26th. As a result, the original Disney content will become unavailable overnight. While this decision is surprising at first glance, the purpose of the operation is to devalue the content from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion in order to remove it from Disney’s financial statements and thereby reduce the company’s tax burden in the long term. And yes, we need to remember that Keeping titles that don’t work on a platform represents a cost that the entertainment giant is increasingly reluctant to pay. The Warner Bros. group came to the same conclusion with its own service HBO Max, which removed several pieces of content for around 100 million dollars.
In general, the general trend with any streaming player seems to be to rationalize the amount of content produced. We recall that Disney CEO Bog Iger recently expressed his desire to slow down the amount of content created around Star Wars and Marvel, which was less successful than expected. With this in mind, Netflix seems to be doing better by diversifying its productions, even if we know that the streaming giant is used to multiplying the seasons of its series that work best. With the Disney+, Prime Video, and HBO Max catalogs weakening combined with the Hollywood strike, Netflix could do well and maintain its leadership position in the streaming market.. And who knows, maybe this could result in some deals between these big names in entertainment. After all, Arrowverse series have long been present on Netflix, which has even spawned Marvel series. What if circumstances caused everything to go back to how it was before? Only the future will tell us.
