While browsing the Netflix home page or app, if you’ve been thinking there are lot of shows to choose from, it’s not your imagination: Netflix is offering a whole bunch of original programming right now.
According to Ted Sarandos, the company’s chief content officer, Netflix has 30 original shows that are either currently available on the streaming service or in development. And there will plenty of additions to come. Netflix is going big into unscripted content next year, which the company believes will play well internationally. One of those shows will be Ultimate Beastmaster, a international competition featuring an obstacle course that will be held in six different countries with different celebrity hosts in each location.
Offering unscripted content raises the question of whether or not Netflix would ever try to acquire live sports rights. But Sarandos shot that idea down, saying — and understandably so — that live programming doesn’t fit the company’s model.
Overall, Sarandos expects Netflix to have 1,000 hours of original programming to offer subscribers in 2017, more than twice the amount it had this year. The company will invest approximately $6 billion, up from the $5 billion spent on original content in 2016. With that, Netflix intends nearly 50 percent of its offerings to be original programming.
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Netflix had one of the buzziest shows of the summer with Stranger Things, which seemed to dominate pop culture conversation and fill plenty of leisure time for people looking for entertainment. In addition to being a big hit for the company, the show also represented an important step because it was an in-house production. Producing its own content will create plenty of options for subscribers to download and watch offline, a new option now offered by the service.
That likely won’t be the case with programming that Netflix licenses, such as its Marvel shows and Gilmore Girls, which is owned by Warner Brothers. But those sorts of shows allow Netflix to offer a far wider variety of programming, reaching all sorts of different audiences. So don’t expect the company to move entirely toward in-house productions.
In addition to original scripted and unscripted programming, Netflix also plans to continue making original movies, such as Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous Six and True Memoirs of an International Assassin, starring Kevin James. Particularly ambitious is Bright, an R-rated supernatural cop film directed by David Ayer (Suicide Squad), and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. That’s set to be released at some point in 2017.
So if you thought you already spent enough time with Netflix and were having trouble keeping up with everything, get ready to give over even more of your time and chase even more TV shows and movies in the year to come.
