Two months after Disney split, Netflix pledges $8B for original content

Another early holiday gift for Netflix investors this year. (credit: macappsaddict via Flickr)

In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Netflix announced its intentions to spend $7 billion to $8 billion on original content for 2018.

"Our investment in Netflix originals is over a quarter of our total P&L [profit and loss] content budget in 2017 and will continue to grow," the company said in its call report. "With $17 billion in content commitments over the next several years and a growing library of owned content ($2.5 billion net book value at the end of the quarter), we remain quite comfortable with our ability to please our members around the world. We'll spend $7-8 billion on content (on a P&L basis) in 2018."

The $8 billion figure represents a potentially significant increase over Netflix's current spending. The New York Times puts estimates of Netflix's 2017 content spending at $6 billion, so the company may spend as much as ~33 percent more on originals next year. By comparison, Hulu reportedly committed $2.5 billion to original programming this year, and Amazon hit $4.5 billion (Amazon has already pledged more for 2018 but did not cite specific figures when speaking to Variety last month). Apple made a splash recently with a "mere" $1 billion commitment to original content in 2018.

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