Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos On The Return Of Licensing – “It’s The Natural State Of The Business”

deadline.com:

Ted Sarandos acknowledged that Netflix may be making fewer movies than it used to — because it’s so much easier to license them now.

As streaming losses mounted at traditional media companies there’s been a big shift, back to Netflix, which, in its early days used to pad studio coffers with cash until they got nervous, pulled back and more recently began aggressively repurposing content for their in-house platforms.

That led to Netflix’ big push into original content. “We ramped up at that kind of aggressive pace because we had no access to license films” and not much of a library, Sarandos, co-CEO of the giant streamer, said at the UBS media conference in NYC. “What has happened is that the availability to license has opened up a lot more.” He cited deals with Sony and Universal (which just delivered, respectively, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and The Super Mario Bros.

Movie. (Sony, which doesn’t have a streaming service, has been the one Hollywood studio that’s consistently licensed content.) That’s “the more natural state of the business,” he said.