Judd Apatow (Superbad) has given his opinion on the uprising swing of streaming networks licensing their titles to their rivals. According to Deadline, Apatow’s comments came after Warner Bros. Discovery drew up deal to license the HBO series Sex and the City to Netflix. Apatow is now considering the potential lasting effects of these deals on the industry in the following years.
Deadline notes that Apatow sat down for recent interview with Vulture and said, “I’m of two minds. There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch Deadwood or NYPD Blue or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television. But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, ‘Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back Barnaby Jones.’ They’re going to do it, then you’ll get fewer new shows.”
Apatow added, “They realize, Oh wait, Netflix can just buy shows from HBO, and I would assume they’re cheaper than making new ones. Then at some point, Netflix will sell its shows to HBO, and it’ll just be passing around all the episodes of Ballers for the rest of our lives.”
As per Deadline, Apatow, a director, producer and writer, offered his view on the future of the industry, saying, “There are these corporate behemoths and people from the tech world taking over creativity. And for some of them — not all of them — their intentions are just eyeball time online. I don’t know if they’re obsessed with quality filmmaking in the way other owners of these entities have been in the past. That’s why they started calling it “content.” All of a sudden, they diminished it as much as it possibly could be. I don’t think it would be that weird if you read something in the paper that Pornhub bought Paramount+.”
Deadline also notes that Apatow touched on how studios must take on big risks, much like Universal Pictures’ chairperson, Donna Langley (The Cell), who took a chance on the hit film Oppenheimer.
He stated, “Like, who would think that anyone cared about Oppenheimer like that? Oppenheimer is going to make almost $1 billion. Like, is anyone talking about the inventor of the atom bomb in their lives? We don’t, but the people have to take big risks, and then you realize, no, people want to be challenged. They want smart movies. They want original cinematic experiences. You do need a comedy equivalent of that.”