American DVD rental company Netflix has reportedly invested $US100 million in its first piece of original content, in a sign the business has aspirations beyond just DVD and digital distribution.
As reported by Deadline Hollywood, the company has outbid cable networks HBO and AMC for the rights to produce an adaptation of the 1990 miniseries House of Cards.
The Wall Street Journal has also reported the company is in talks with rights holders.
The report claims the company has ordered two seasons’ worth of content.
The move shows that Netflix is attempting to challenge the cable networks outright for the creation and distribution of new content – analysts point out it is sure to gain a huge number of subscribers once the content becomes available.
Various reports over the past year or so have said cable networks are becoming discontent with Netflix as subscribers opt to cancel their pay-TV subscriptions in favour of sites such as itself and Hulu.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COMMENTS
SmartCompany is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while it is being reviewed, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.