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Businesses The Almighty Buck Entertainment

Netflix Is Spending $420 Million on Indian Content, CEO Says (bloomberg.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Netflix is plowing 30 billion rupees ($420 million) this year and next to produce more local content in India, one of the biggest and most-crowded markets for the world's largest paid streaming-service provider. From a report: "You'll start to see a lot of stuff hit the screen, big investment," Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said at an event in New Delhi on Friday. "We're really trying to invest in that becoming more Indian in the content offering." The Los Gatos, California-based company is jostling with other giants such as Walt Disney Co.-owned Hotstar and Amazon.com Prime for a slice of the growing market as more Indians use smartphones to view videos. The companies are offering relatively cheaper packages to lure paying subscribers in a country used to free YouTube offerings. Hastings has said Netflix's goal is to attract 100 million customers in India -- almost 25 times its estimated subscriber base there as of this year. The world's second-most populous country is a priority for company, which is effectively blocked in China. Disney's Hotstar, which is already the leader in India, will get a boost soon when the entertainment giant eventually introduces Disney+, a new streaming service it started last month in some markets.
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Netflix Is Spending $420 Million on Indian Content, CEO Says More

Netflix Is Spending $420 Million on Indian Content, CEO Says

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  • Aren't the owners embarrassed by this?

    • Aren't the owners embarrassed by this?

      Slashdot is a corporate possession. As long as people keep coming here and having the same old arguments time and again, the amount of content continues to increase, and the number of ad impressions likewise (I presume mostly as people end up here accidentally when doing web searches, since slashdotters often run ad blockers.) It costs little to run this site at its current level of popularity, but it would cost some time (however little) to fix this pathetic problem. The "editors" don't even bother to dupe

  • ...Hey more power to Netflix trying to make more money.

    But PLEASE...filter this crap from being offered on my lists, I have no interesting in seeing bollywood type entertainment, dancing around and the ear splitting "music".

    If someone is in to that, please make it available to them to search for, but please don't clog up my recommendations with something I have absolutely NO interest in viewing.

    Its hard enough scrolling through the ton of stuff to find things worth watching as it is.

    • You can give it thumbs down and hopefully Netflix will get the hint.

      • You can give it thumbs down and hopefully Netflix will get the hint.

        Netflix's recommendation engine is kinda stupid. My spouse is Chinese, and occasionally we watch Mandarin movies. So the recommendation engine sees that, and says "Oh, these people like foreign films, let's recommend a bunch of French and Italian flicks."

        • The problem lies exactly in the US-centrism of many American content providers. Not only they assemble everything that is not Made in USA under an idiotic âoeWorld musicâ or âoeWorld cinemaâ label: when they organize their content by country, they seem to willfully ignore that every one of them has its share of good music/movies and a usually larger share of crap. While I like to listen to some selected Italian singer-songwriters (Iâ(TM)m Italian myself) that doesnâ(TM)t mean I

        • Ya, but did you watch it with English subtitles? That's a big hint towards "likes foreign films", especially if you have a long history of watching English language stuff and American shows. This is also a reason some people keep separate profiles from other family members.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      The Bollywood version of "Bird Box", where the entities have a 13-minute song and dance number, should be quite a treat.

    • Netflix has so little new content lately (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 06, 2019 @10:05AM (#59491232)
      they don't have much choice. They keep losing everything to Disney, who keeps buying up everything (like seeing Home Alone every year at your local independent cinema? Too bad Disney just tossed it in the vault, just be glad they didn't do it to Rocky Horror, which they now own).

      Netflix will show you what it has, and if all it has is Bollywood then Bollywood you will get. Until you cancel that is, and Netflix goes under.

      Isn't a total lack of anti-trust law enforcement fun?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geek ( 5680 )

        just be glad they didn't do it to Rocky Horror, which they now own

        I think we'd all be better off if they did

    • I agree. I am sure many out there are interested in this material, but I am not. Its presence in my lists would just clutter them, and would make using Netflix far less enjoyable. Please, Netflix, makes sure that this is an opt-in in certain markets, like the US one.

    • I keep getting recommendations for foreign language films, just to make it more confusing the descriptions are in English and you don't know it's a foreign language until you play it.

      If there is a setting for preferred languages I can't find it.

      • Why are the Americans so scared of foreign movies?

        • Why are the Americans so scared of foreign movies?

          Not scared.

          Just not interested.

          There's a difference.

          • And this alleged difference explains the countless Hollywood remakes of European movies exactly how?

            • And this alleged difference explains the countless Hollywood remakes of European movies exactly how?

              Err, not sure what you're talking about.

              What are all of these countless Hollywood remakes of European movies?

              • Either you don't understand that a remake is or you seriously ask for me to type an excessively long list.
                And it's not just the movies, Americans even remake a shitload of British TV shows that already are in the same bloody language.

                • Either you don't understand that a remake is or you seriously ask for me to type an excessively long list.

                  And it's not just the movies, Americans even remake a shitload of British TV shows that already are in the same bloody language.

                  I know what a remake is.

                  And for TV shows, yes, I know the US has brought some over here for remakes.

                  I"m not aware of any EU movies that have been brought over here for remakes however, so I was asking.

                  • The girl with a dragon tattoo for example. Nightwatch, the experiment, just visiting, true lies, vanilla sky
                    That is just from the top of my head, there are many more.

        • It's not necessarily foreign films it stuff that's not in a language I understand. Subtitles just don't convey the same subtleties that the spoken language does.

          • Watch enough subtitled movies and you will pick up enough words of a foreign language to understand at least some of them.

        • I do enjoy movies with subtitles but it's a different activity, you have to focus exclusively on the movie, no online Christmas shopping or whatever at the same time. And yes focusing on a good movie is a good thing to do. But not every day.

  • Will that be 420 million shows, or 3 good shows? Because from what I've seen of Netflix in the past year, they aren't interested in making quality content anymore, and I don't think I'm alone in suggesting that the crap category of TV is already well covered. Just adding "made in India" to the title page will not be enough to entice a population beyond the first month.

    Hell, the last new show, V-wars, was so bad I needed 5 attempts to get through the first episode (to give it a fair chance). I suspect even a

    • Will that be 420 million shows, or 3 good shows? Because from what I've seen of Netflix in the past year, they aren't interested in making quality content anymore

      None of that really applies to what we're talking about here, which is Bollywood type garbage.

    • What about "Another Life"? That was good, right?

      • Let's see if I can remember what I've tried. I'm trying to stick to only those produced by Netflix funding, but I will most likely be wrong on the source for some of them. This list is by no means comprehensive.

        V-wars - terrible
        Comedy stand up specials - terrible
        Merry Happy whatever - terrible
        Daybreak - terrible
        The Ranch - terrible
        Salvation - terrible
        The Order - terrible
        "Documentaries" - terrible (here I count almost all of them. They aren't informative at all, they just scream about how cool and scary some

        • The Ranch was unrealistic on the business parts but I basically went to school with Colt. Alcoholic small town football star goes to college then fails at a football career comes home to work on the family farm knocks up his high school sweetheart get married divorced knocks up a much younger girl.

        • Hey i like the ranch kinda as a mirror darkly reminder...
          also i forgive alot to N because of altered carbon.

  • Hope they keep in mind of the diversity situation there.. Unlike US and some other countries they cannot just make content with one language and expect everyone in India to watch.

  • That content? Ganja!
  • Netflix wants to be the next T-Series. Hope you "theys" like musicals

  • "Netflix Is Spending $420 Million on Indo Content, CEO Says."

    Snoopp Dogg will be hosting the marathon of content.

  • ... while American citizens vote for agoraphobia, coupled with xenophobia, US companies have the opportunity to say, "Fuck that, we have peniaphobia."

  • Funny number. Very hilarious. Similar to 69 number. So funny. Secret drug number. People hide drugs.

  • Sheesh. More of the same mother in law dramas and song and dance crapola ? Seriously ?
  • I really hope this content stays in India. I am already sick of seeing so much Spanish language content into Brazilian Netflix, they probably think the country speaks Spanish or have anything likely Spanish in its culture, which is so utterly wrong. 200M people that don't give a damn to Spanish. And Indian produced stuff. Please, Netflix.
  • This is great news. Netflix is huge for learning foreign languages because it often offers a good range of dubbing and subtitles that you can mix and match. I hope they expand to other countries based not just on the number of speakers of those languages, but also on the number of learners. German, for example, is quite underserved.
  • that they are better than this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

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