After losing a bidding war with Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros' huge portfolio of characters and stories, Netflix is shifting gears and looking for new franchises capable of defining popular culture, Reuters reports.
Bela Bajaria, Netflix's chief creative officer, said the streaming platform will continue to invest in original ideas and collaborate with established studios such as MGM and Warner Bros. in an effort to produce movies and series that last for years, along the lines of “Stranger Things,” “Wednesday” and “Bridgerton.”
“For me, that's the constant goal,” Bajaria said in an interview with Reuters.
However, the failed attempt to buy the famous Warner Bros movie studio and HBO television showed a vulnerability of Netflix, whose catalog of original films and series does not span more than about a decade, compared to more than a century of stories and characters owned by Warner Bros, Walt Disney and Universal Pictures.
Netflix was willing to make the biggest bet in its history, $82.7 billion, to strengthen its cinema library and expand its portfolio of intellectual properties with titles such as “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones”.
It would have been one of the biggest deals in media history, but Paramount Skydance ended up bidding even more. By comparison, to buy the legendary studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2022, Amazon paid $8.5 billion, almost 10 times less than Netflix's offer for the studio Warner Bros, HBO and streaming platform HBO Max, all owned by the wider conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery.
Interviews with 16 current and former Netflix executives, industry leaders and agents paint a picture of a streaming giant whose strategy to produce content for everyone and serve multiple audiences at once differs from Taylor Sheridan's universe-building for Paramount, with numerous “Yellowstone” spin-offs benefiting from an already loyal audience.
Why franchises are important to major Hollywood studios
Franchises can be extremely valuable to entertainment companies because they represent lower-risk investments and can generate additional revenue from the sale of spin-off products and physical experiences for audiences. Familiar stories and characters stand out more easily in a fragmented media landscape, capturing viewers' attention in a time dominated by numerous distractions.
Netflix announced its first major acquisition — comic book publisher Millarworld — a day before Disney told investors in August 2017 that it would pull its movies from the streaming platform to create a rival service, later called Disney+.
“Stranger Things” was an undisputed success, spawning a spin-off series, a stage play and a wide range of commercial products. Netflix points to other examples, such as the Chris Hemsworth-starring action-adventure Extraction, which led to a sequel and a third film in production, as well as a series with acclaimed French actor Omar Sy. His long-running dating show Love Is Blind has been adapted for multiple global markets, including versions made in Brazil, France and Japan.
While building its own franchises there have also been costly setbacks, such as the estimated $700 million deal to acquire the rights to British author Roald Dahl's catalog of stories, which includes beloved children's titles such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The investment has yet to generate a major hit in five years, though Netflix will try again this year.
The platform is preparing a Willy Wonka-inspired reality show called “Golden Ticket”, where contestants try to survive games and temptations in a setting with a river of chocolate.
Netflix is trying to capitalize on more familiar stories and characters
Netflix's upcoming releases already include established stories and characters, including a live-action “Scooby-Doo” series and a “Narnia” movie based on CS Lewis' books and directed by Greta Gerwig.
Last year's “The Electric State” provides an example of a costly failure that illustrates the risks inherent in trying to launch a large cinematic universe of the kind created by Marvel.
Netflix has tapped Joe and Anthony Russo, the brothers behind Disney's smash hits “Avengers” and “Extraction,” to adapt the acclaimed graphic novel of the same name, and has brought “Stranger Things” star Millie Bobby Brown on board for the feature alongside fellow Hollywood star Chris Pratt.
But critics panned the $320 million film, and plans to capitalize on the production more broadly — including a possible spin-off series and sequels — have not materialized, two sources told Reuters.
Bela Bajaria states that “a lot of people make big, intellectual property-based movies that don't work” and that “we're in the film and television industry, so some things work, some things don't.”
