Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos says ~85% of new spending to go toward original content, plans to have about 1,000 originals total by the end of 2018
Netflix is sharply steering its new content spending toward original projects, with around 85% of new spending going toward original TV shows …
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement is the midpoint of an arc that started with CFO David Wells' target of originals reaching 50% of the catalog back in 2016, when Netflix was only 'one-third to halfway' there. A year ago Sarandos put the 2018 budget at $7B for original content; the related coverage now has total spending at $8B, and Sarandos is saying roughly 85% of all new spending goes to originals, with about 1,000 originals on the service by year-end.
The scale-up was global from the start — weeks earlier Netflix had committed ~$1B to European productions across multiple languages — and the same playbook later reached India with a majority-originals budget. What makes today's number worth tracking is that the volume strategy eventually hit its ceiling: by 2022 Netflix was reported to be adding fewer titles and reining in spending after churning out 500+ programs a year.
First-order effects
- Netflix's own slate becomes its primary product: with 85% of new dollars going to originals, licensed content stops growing as a share of the catalog, and the production machine ramps toward the 1,000-title mark by end of 2018.
Second-order effects
- Rival streamers face an originals arms race priced against an $8B annual budget, while international markets like Europe and India get localized original slates rather than just imported catalogs — raising demand for local production talent and facilities.
Third-order effects
- The 2022 shift toward fewer, higher-quality titles suggests the volume-first model Sarandos describes here had structural limits — churn and cost pressure pushed the industry from 'more originals' toward curation, a pattern other services building 1,000-title-style catalogs would confront too.
The trend: Streaming is consolidating around owned original catalogs as the core differentiator, with Netflix's 85%-of-new-spend commitment marking the peak of the volume era before quality-over-quantity corrections set in.