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From left; SAG-AFTRA captains Iris Liu and Miki Yamashita and SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland lead a cheer for striking actors outside Paramount Pictures studio, Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Writers Guild of America member Bart Gold walks with striking actors on a post apocalyptic-themed picket line outside Netflix studios, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Shadows of striking actors including SAG-AFTRA member Isaac Burks, left, are pictured tapping together their picket signs outside Netflix studios, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The three-year contract must be approved by the board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and its members in the coming days. But union leadership declared that the strike will end at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, putting all of the parts of production back into action for the first time since spring.
More than 60,000 SAG-AFTRA members went on strike July 14, joining screenwriters who had walked off the job more than two months earlier. It was the first time the two unions had been on strike together since 1960. The studios and writers reached a deal that brought their strike to an end on Sept. 26.
The union valued the deal at over a billion dollars. Crabtree-Ireland said the deal includes boosts to minimum payments to actors, a greater share of streaming revenue going to performers, a bolstering of benefit plans and protections against the unfettered use of artificial intelligence in recreating performances. Details of the terms will not be released until after a meeting on Friday where board members review the contract.
The agreement also means a return to sets for thousands of film crew members who were left with nothing to work on during the strikes. SAG-AFTRA sought to offset their hardship by allowing sometimes controversial interim agreements for some smaller productions to proceed, and by making their strike relief fund available to all workers in the industry.
Netflix on Tuesday said it will soon be home to the WWE's most-watched wrestling show, as part of a multibillion-dollar deal that will see the streaming giant enter the ring to compete in covering live sports.
The streaming giant is acquiring the rights to WWE Raw in a $5 billion deal to be paid out over 10 years, as the wrestling group's contract with Comcast nears its expiration, Bloomberg reported. The series will begin airing on Netflix in January 2025, and will be available to subscribers in North America and other international markets. WWE is part of TKO Group Holdings.
More broadly, the agreement highlights the opportunities companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Paramount Global see in streaming sports content (Paramount owns CBS News.) The number of viewers who stream sports events at least once a month is projected to rise to more than 90 million by 2025, up roughly 58% from 57 million in 2021, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Speaking on CNBC, TKO CEO Ariel Emanuel said he didn't believe there's a move away from traditional television networks or cable networks, but that streaming platforms were becoming another option, as seen through its "Raw" deal with Netflix.
Netflix is a comparatively late entrant to growing business of live-streaming sporting events. Its push to build out its live sports offerings comes less than a year after the company aired its first live sports event, The Netflix Cup, a golf tournament in 2023.
Under the deal, Netflix will also stream WWE specials such as Smackdown and NXT, in addition to hosting pay-per-view live events, such as Wrestlemania and Royal Rumble. Pay-per-view content will be available to Netflix subscribers at no extra charge.
That means the movie was more popular with Netflix users in India than "House of Cards" or "Narcos" were with Netflix viewers in the United States when they were first released. Netflix does not share viewership numbers for countries or series.
"Sacred Games" is set in the Mumbai underworld and stars several big Bollywood names. It's the kind of original series Netflix is counting on to boost its share of one of the world's most promising video streaming markets.
"We've been producing shows that are incredibly relevant in their home territories, and the nice windfall is that they get viewed all over the world," Sarandos said. "It's really accelerating the brand perception of Netflix as ... someone who's producing content that you care about in every part of the world."
Another original series produced in India, called "Ghoul," will release late next month. Shows based on books by renowned authors like Salman Rushdie and Aravind Adiga are in the works.
Hotstar had 75 million monthly active subscribers in India at the end of 2017 compared to 5 million for Netflix, according to tech consultancy Counterpoint Research. Another global competitor, Amazon Prime Video, had 11 million users in India.
That TV market has also largely been cornered by Fox, whose local subsidiary Star India reaches more than 700 million viewers. That massive audience could soon belong to Disney (DIS) if its deal to buy most of Fox goes through.
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One of the strongest aspects of Warner Bros. Discovery label has always been the HBO content, especially the scripted shows that seemingly always win awards. With HBO content, many flocked to the HBO Max app, leading it to garner numbers that rivaled both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
What made HBO Max so special is how WBD also decided to throw out huge films like Mortal Kombat (2021) and Dune (2021) to the streamer, which was their response to theaters closing worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic. That is no longer the case, but it allowed HBO Max to stand out from its competitors.
Though it has not yet been confirmed, Deadline released a report stating that WBD is set to strike a historic deal that will allow original scripted content for HBO to be streamed on Netflix. The first show being considered part of this deal is the hit comedy from Issa Rae, Insecure. Though this is the first title being discussed, more will be added.
This will be the first time in 10 years that HBO content will have landed on another rival streamer. Initially, Amazon Prime Video was given streaming rights in 2014 to license shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and The Wire. However, this deal was made before Amazon became the biggest streamer, even above Netflix.
Veteran HBO workers pushed back against allowing Netflix to stream scripted content, but they were overruled by corporate financial consideration won out. This might seem like an excellent cost-cutting or money-making venture currently, but that might also come back to haunt WBD.
This move might sound like it could lead to much wealth for WBD, but again, this could cause an even bigger rift between HBO staff and David Zaslav. Then again, should workers want to push back against all his ideas openly, they might also find themselves without a job. This is just speculation, but one of the biggest cost-cutting moves for any company is to lay off its employees.
The silver lining to this is that many Netflix-only subscribers will not benefit from being able to stream HBO content that had previously not been available to them. Though we imagine only a few shows will be making their way to Netflix at first, this could open the floodgates for a partnership that might turn both media companies into a powerhouse.
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