Netflix might be getting deeper into the anime game!
Yesterday, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings was interviewed by New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook conference. During the conversation, Hastings noted that he’s “hopeful” that Netflix will “make a great anime show.”
Hastings made the comment as he elaborated on the ways that Netflix will create new and unique programming from around the globe.
The full answer is as follows:
When I look at our shows, we just had one come out this summer, Narcos, and it’s a very different kind of show. It’s an American company, Netflix, contracts with the oldest movie company in the world — a french company Gaumont — to make a production in Bogota, Columbia, featuring Brazilian actors and directed by a Brazilian — three quarters Spanish, one quarter English — and it’s hugely popular in Germany.
You go beyond the normal spectrum to get quality and you really stretch to the things that you can do. On-demand and the internet really gives you that power. when you have incredible distribution, then you have to open the front end of the funnel to have incredible producers around the world.
We’re hopeful that we’ll over time make a great Bollywood show, make a great anime show. It might not be that that Bollywood show is for [Showtime CEO] Matt Blank. It might be that it’s more segmented, but again the internet let’s you do that. I think that’s the key in that enablement. But as Matt knows, making these shows is very challenging and I’m sure we’ll have issues over time.
Next year, Netflix expects tp spend $5 billion on content, both original and otherwise.
In North America, Netflix currently distributes Knights of Sidonia and The Seven Deadly Sins as Netflix Original titles. the company will add Glitter Force (Smile Precure!) on December 18, and Ajin – Demi-Human in mid-2016.
Netflix launched in Japan on September 2. The company will stream Ajin – Demi-Human on its service as the show airs on Japanese TV.
The entire interview is available for free online streaming, via the New York Times’s YouTube page:
Source: The Verge
