To understand just how powerful Amazon and Netflix became in 2017, you have to look at what happened at the year’s close.
In December, Disney, a bellowing freight train of a media company, made yet another stop to pick up Fox and its $52 billion assets.
Buying Fox has meant it has acquired a new portion of Marvel characters to sustain the MCU for years to come, bought its way into UK homes with a chunk of BSkyB now under its wing, and became a majority shareholder in Hulu – a streaming service that’s yet to make its way out of the US but has served up fantastic fare, with the likes of The Handmaid’s Tale on its books.
That last point is very important as it fits nicely with Disney’s previous bold assertion that it plans to make its own streaming service, for its animated arsenal and expanding Star Wars galaxy. It’s doing this to do what it can to stop the two-horse streaming race.
Because that’s exactly what streaming is in 2017, with both Netflix and Amazon parading a distribution method that’s happy to upturn the stuffy Hollywood ways of old and put its money where its mouth is. It’s got everyone worried – from distributors to theater owners – and for good reason.
Where once Netflix and Amazon were seen as the plucky underdogs with limited ambition, they are now beating the rest to Prime fodder, have real scope and in Netflix’s case over 100 million subscribers.
Take Amazon for instance: it bet $1 billion on the rights to the Lord of the Rings TV franchise in 2017, outbidding HBO and (surprise, surprise) Netflix. In 2018, Netflix will be going for breadth with 80 original films in production. That’s almost two releases a week, not even taking into account the TV shows it is set to make.
The scope and scale of these two companies is simply unprecedented in Hollywood.
The problem is, Netflix needs more Brights and Stranger Things, many more, if it’s truly going to succeed, as does Amazon.
Those cogs clicking into place for Disney could prove the undoing of the two current streaming giants in 2018 and beyond.
Disney already revealed that it is to take its content away from Netflix when the current contract is up, which leaves a massive Mouse-shaped hole to fill. Netflix is choosing to fill this hole up with original movies, shows and lots of them.
Netflix and Amazon and their refreshing distribution model is here to stay but expect a shift to happen in 2018.
(Excerpt) Read More at: TechRadar.com
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