For quite a while, Netflix was the only streaming game in town.
However, big Hollywood studios like Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal, soon came to the conclusion that they ought to stop supplying Netflix with content and instead, become its competition.
Yet, if you examine corporate financial reports and listen to earnings calls, it appears that new streaming services such as Max, Disney+, and virtually every other streaming newcomer are struggling to make a profit.
And according to well-documented cinema enthusiast Christopher Nolan, this shift in strategy is what heavily contributed to the current, ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
In a new interview with Variety, Nolan stated, "Part of the craziness with the labor negotiations this summer has been the studios sitting there and going, ‘Well, we can’t pay you because we don’t have enough money'. To which the answer is ‘Well, you don’t have enough money because you’re not managing your business correctly. You’re not getting the same amount of money for your product that you were before.’ The shift to streaming has disrupted the entire industry and created problems for everybody."
And it seems like the different Hollywood studios are beginning to have the same doubts as Nolan. More and more, you read about TV shows and movies disappearing from studio-owned streaming platforms and eventually showing up on Netflix.
Just recently, it was announced that a number of DCEU films would be leaving Max for Netflix.
It will be interesting to see if the final outcome for the great streaming wars of the current decade is a return to the original business model of licensing content to Netflix.
And just today, Disney revealed that its streaming outlet, Disney+ had recently lost $387 million in Q4 alone.
Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that he's not ready to follow Warner Bros. Discovery's lead and start licensing its big franchises to Netflix again (i.e Marvel and Star Wars) but they'll start licensing their other properties.
Said Iger, "We’ve actually been licensing content to Netflix, and are going to continue to. We’re actually in discussion with them now about some opportunities, but I wouldn’t expect that we will license our core brands to them. Those are real, obviously competitive advantages for us and differentiators."
"Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, for instance, are all doing very, very well on our platform, and I don’t see why, just to basically chase bucks, we should do that when they are really really important building blocks to the current and future of our streaming business."
However, if Disney+ keeps losing the company such huge sums of money, don't be surprised if Iger changes his tune.