It’s been a rough and tumble last few months for Netflix, but the company finally has some good news to share with the world thanks to a new agreement with DreamWorks -- even though little will change in the near term, with new movies being added to the streaming service only in 2013.
The New York Times is reporting that the dark clouds have parted over Netflix, if only for a few moments. On Sunday, the newspaper broke the news that Netflix has inked an estimated $30 million per picture deal with DreamWorks, the studio responsible for such animated hits as Madagascar and the Shrek series. The deal is a big risk for DreamWorks, who is shunning a “less lucrative” contract with HBO in favor of teaming with the embattled Netflix.
“We are really starting to see a long-term road map of where the industry is headed,” explained DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg of the decision. “This is a game-changing deal.”
For their part, Netflix sees the move as putting the power “back into the hands of content creators,” as chief content officer Ted Sarandos calls it. “When a company like DreamWorks ends a long-running pay TV deal -- when a new buyer in the space steps up -- that’s a really interesting landscape shift.”
Unfortunately, the roughly 25 million Netflix streaming customers will have to wait to reap the rewards of the deal, with new release titles appearing in 2013 with three DreamWorks releases: The Croods, Turbo and Peabody & Sherman, the latter based on the classic Rocky & Bullwinkle characters. Catalog titles such as Kung Fu Panda and Antz “will become available over time.”
While some media outlets have hyperventilated calling the DreamWorks deal a coup for Netflix in the wake of losing the Starz catalog, let’s not forget that DreamWorks’ catalog is far less extensive and contains primarily kiddie fare -- good news for parents and their kids to be sure, but hardly a suitable replacement for the giant chunk of newer releases that Starz could have brought to the table.
In the meantime, Netflix continues to bulk up on other fronts, including a deal last week with Discovery that will keep older shows from the likes of TLC and Animal Planet streaming onto the service.
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