Last September, Netflix declared that it eventually wants half of its entire streaming library to consist of original content, a claim that seemed absurd until a group determined that Netflix had already slashed half of its content from 2012 to 2016—meaning the ratio was already sliding in favor of the originals since there were fewer non-originals to bother with. Since then, Netflix has lost a number of big shows and movies while continuing to develop more original content, and now Variety is reporting that Netflix hopes to release “around 80 original films” next year.
That surprisingly big number comes straight from chief content officer Ted Sarandos, who explains that these 80 movies will range from “the million-dollar Sundance hit” to “something on a much larger scale” like David Ayer’s orc cop movie Bright. Considering that Netflix only released eight movies in the third quarter of this year, that number is going to necessitate a huge uptick in the number of original movies that Netflix puts out each month.
For anyone connecting the dots and guessing that this plan to make 80 movies has something to do with Netflix’s recent price hike, Sarandos says there’s “no timing correlation” between the two things. Unfortunately, Netflix subscribers might have a hard time buying that, since the price hike means that their bank accounts will be a dollar shorter every month now, but at least they’ll have a ton of new movies to ignore while they settle for another episode of Friends or New Girl.