Aussies give Netflix $1 billion a year – let’s ask for half of it back
During the week, local peak body Screen Producers Australia teamed up with 19 other screen organisations from Europe, New Zealand, Canada, a place named ‘Ireland’, and Spain, and demanded legislation that requires Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and other streamers to invest a percentage of its earnings in each territory back into local productions.
The various peak bodies issued a dot-point list of demands, the main one being “all platforms that derive financial benefit from conducting business in the local market should financially contribute, proportionally, to the creation of new local content for the benefit of local audiences.”
Pleasingly, the Australian government is ahead of the international curve in regards to this issue. It has already committed to introducing a local content quota for all streaming services operating in the country by mid-2024.
I wish commentators would quote correct values. From their 2022 accounts, it looks like revenue is around A$48bn, but their actual earnings (i.e. profit) is around A$8bn – still a lot, but far less than the author implies.
A Netflix made period accurate series based on the ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ would be pretty good.
Ah no thanks, Australia want Netflix for the lack of forced fed Aussie content, otherwise they’d watch FTA.. nice try tho.
I think what you mean is that Aussie’s don’t want to be force-fed under-funded Aussie content. Doubt anyone would have a problem with Aussie content that has the production budgets we see from content produced in the States or the UK. Recent locally produced stuff like Boy Swallows Universe, Colin from Accounts and Latecomers have shown what’s possible. Get some extra funding in and we could consistently be producing really high calibre stuff that people would be more than happy to watch on the daily.
So the angle of this article is to try and get funding for Australian film projects you netflix would have to make deals with government-funded film producers to cover the cost enough which would only make them both richer