The above video is from film pundit John Campea’s YouTube channel, in which he discusses the cost of streaming to studios. 

More than ever, studios are in cutthroat competition with each other to produce the best, and perhaps more importantly, the most content each year. This is because of the advent of streaming, and its dominance throughout the 2010’s and forward. Make no mistake, the box office is alive and well. Whether its Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, or Avatar: The Way of Water, even in our post-pandemic society people are still rushing to see giant blockbuster movies. Realistically however, these types of films come out twice, maybe three times a year if we’re lucky. Most content these days goes straight to streaming.

A report from IndieWire demonstrates just how much the major studios are spending each year to produce the most “stuff” possible. Gone are the days where Hollywood was dominated by the eight major studios and produced a handful of pictures each year. In the report, equity analysts at Wells Fargo estimated Disney would spend $31.75 billion on all of its productions whether it be theatrical or streaming in 2023 alone. To put that into perspective, that’s about the same as the Nominal GDP of the country of Honduras, and a few billion more than Iceland.

Because of streaming, studios are in tight competition to control the most valuable IPs in the world. In 2017, Amazon bought the television rights to the Second Age of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for $250 million. It should be noted that Warner Bros. still owns the film rights to Lord of the Rings, and Amazon only holds the right to make a series during the Second Age in the Lord of the Rings canon (yeah, it’s that specific). You add in production costs and marketing, you’re looking at half a billion dollars for just the first season of the brand-new Rings of Power series that released in 2022. All of this stresses just how far studios are willing to go in order to win over subscribers from other platforms.