Skip to main content

Watch out HBO: Netflix hopes to produce five new series per year

netflix five new shows hq house of cards
Image used with permission by copyright holder
According to a recent GQ magazine article, Netflix is looking to produce as many as five new shows a year going forward. It seems the company is fully committed to stepping into this new arena and – considering the seismic shift it induced in the video rental industry – the networks can’t afford to ignore the move.

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, sees the irony in the company’s current initiative, and told GQ that its goal is to “become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” Sarandos is referring to HBO’s recent decision to throw its full weight behind HBO GO, the premium channel’s streaming service.

Netflix’s first original series was Lilyhammer, a dramatic comedy about a New York City wise guy who’s relocated to Norway. Clearly the effort didn’t sour the company on the idea of creating its own content. It has followed its initial effort up with House of Cards, a David Fincher-directed, Kevin Spacey-starring drama scheduled to debut February 1, 2013. Industry insiders will no doubt have their eye on the show, as it will be an early bellwether that could help assess the viability of Netflix’s new strategy.

By next Summer, the company will expand its TV offerings further, adding three new exclusives to its lineup. Each of the new series will be available to stream in their entirety upon release. Netflix Founder Reed Hastings told GQ that releasing series all at once and allowing viewers to watch them whenever they please is a strategy meant to counteract TV’s culture of “managed dissatisfaction.” He believes that people are accepting imperfect alternatives mostly due to a lack of superior options, options which Netflix plans to provide.

Whether the one-time upstart can compete with the likes of HBO remains to be see, but it’s hard to believe that the idea behind Netflix’s approach to television won’t catch on somewhere else, even if it fails. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it 100 times: The times they are a-changin’.

Editors' Recommendations

Adam Poltrack
Adam is an A/V News Writer for Digital Trends, and is responsible for bringing you the latest advances in A/V…
Amazon ups the ante with Netflix, aims to release up to 30 movies a year
Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies orcs

Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke, who has had the job for a year now, recently shared that Amazon will be stepping up its content competition with Netflix, but with a more conservative approach. "We don't want our customers to have an endless scroll," Salke told The Hollywood Reporter, in a jab at Netflix's seemingly boundless budget for original productions. "We want to be much more curated and pointed about what we're putting up on the service, what we're putting out theatrically." Curated and pointed or not, the approach is still going to yield an impressive number of titles -- as many as 30 per year, at a cost that definitely feels Netflix-esque.

Amazon Studios reportedly spent $47 million at the Sundance Film Festival this year, to acquire just five movies, including Late Night, Brittany Runs a Marathon and The Report. It's an investment level that catapulted the studio to a record for a single company at the festival, and more than doubled the amount attributed to Netflix's purchases at the event.

Read more
A Resident Evil television series is reportedly coming to Netflix
A zombie crawls after someone in Resident Evil 2.

Resident Evil 2 - Story Trailer | PS4

In case you haven't heard yet, Capcom's Resident Evil 2 remake is pretty darn good, capturing the essence of the original 1998 game but with a completely modernized control scheme and tremendous visual and audio design. If that's not enough of the zombie franchise for you, though, Netflix is reportedly developing a television series based on the game.

Read more
The show cost how much?! The priciest original series on Netflix
most expensive netflix priciest originals house of cards feat

Streaming services have invested some serious dough in recent years to attract new viewers with high-caliber shows. Amazon, for example, has reportedly set aside a budget of more than $1 billion (yes, with a “B”) for five seasons of its upcoming Lord of the Rings series, or $200 million per season. Sometimes, these services are willing to pay top dollar to retain the streaming rights to popular legacy series: Netflix reportedly paid $100 million to keep ‘90s sitcom Friends through 2019.

Moves like this could be part of the reason that Netflix recently hiked its subscription pricing once again, but Netflix has also been dropping massive coin for its own roster of original series and films in the past few years. As such, we've put together this list of the most expensive Netflix original series to date. Note that these figures are based on how much Netflix purportedly spent per season for these series, not necessarily per episode. Enjoy!
Chris Rock Stand-Up Specials
Chris Rock: Tamborine - Stand-Up Special | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

Read more