It’s been a rocky twelve months for the entire entertainment industry due to the wide-ranging effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, but one of the very few beneficiaries have been the various streaming services on offer. Viewership numbers went through the roof during 2020 as people became accustomed to spending more time at home than usual, with Netflix sailing past 200 million subscribers to reinforce their lead at the head of the pack.
HBO Max and Peacock also launched, while CBS All Access rebranded as Paramount+, although we should pour one out for Quibi, which secured $1.75 billion from investors and lasted less than eight months before shutting down in December and selling its entire content library off to Roku for less than $100 million.
Netflix may have canceled an exponentially higher number of shows than usual in recent months, but the company shows no signs of slowing down its rampant spending after pledging to splurge $17 billion on original content this year, which is roughly the same level as 2020. Assuming we’re talking about projects that call action between January and December of 2021, then there are quite a few that are set to run up some hefty costs on their own.
The Russo brothers’ The Gray Man is looking to be the streamer’s most expensive in-house feature ever with a budget said to be hovering around the $250 million mark, while Rian Johnson recently closed a massive deal to deliver two Knives Out sequels and the Extraction cinematic universe likely won’t come cheap, either. On the episodic front, meanwhile, there’s The Umbrella Academy‘s third season, The Witcher: Blood Origin and live-action shows based on Resident Evil and Avatar: The Last Airbender to name but a small few. There’s a ton of high profile and very expensive content on the way from Netflix, then, with that $17 billion figure guaranteed to keep rising on an annual basis.
