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As Netflix launches its content slate for 2024, Monika Shergill, Vice President, Content, Netflix, spoke with businessline to discuss Netflix’s ambitions to reach a wider audience with this slate. Along with this, Shergill spoke about rising production costs, AI, or censorship, and how the streaming firm is taking on these changes. Edited excerpts:
Netflix has had a good run in the last few years with films like RRR or Gangubai, but it was not too long ago that global leadership had said India was lagging as a market. What would your overview of India be, since Netflix entered the country?
India is a complex market, but it is an important market for any company. So getting it right was crucial. When we started in India, we didn’t even have a local team. It’s only in the last three and a half years, we’ve put together a local team. The initial couple of years we as a service were trying to understand the market because we were an international service. We were the first ones to get to bring originals to India and became known for our original films and series. Therefore when the pandemic hit, and we had our films…most studios brought their best films to us, because they knew that Netflix had curated an audience in India that enjoys originals. Netflix has learned quickly in the last 3 and a half years. You will see that every year has been better than 2021, which was a tough year for us. In 2022 we opened to a wider audience, buying movies with a wider appeal like Sooryavanshi,RRR, Darlings, Rana Naidu, Guns and Gulaabs, etc. So we had big movies across the board.
You mention a desire for a wider audience, do you think you new content slate brings that for you?
Streaming as a business is still in its infancy. There will be those early adopters of Netflix in the country who love watching certain kinds of content from the world and India. And then we have consistently been broadening out to the audiences when you see movies like Leo, you see movies like Thunivu, Vaathi, Salaar, Guntur Kaaram,or the Tamil and Telugu blockbusters we have announced, the great Malayalam slate that we have. This along with our Hindi Cinema slate talks to the broadest set of audiences. Even if you look at our upcoming slate, we are taking such a big bet with Heeramandiwhich is meant for the largest possible audience. We are bringing The Kapil Sharma Show to the Netflix fold, and that talks to the broadest audience out there. You can see the direction we are moving in.
There was a time when Netflix was the sole streaming service to air uncut versions of Indian films for global audiences, but that also changed last year. Your thoughts on these decisions?
You know, that sort of is like the maturing of an industry. Streaming was very, very new at that time. We now have the three-tier mechanism that has brought a semblance of circumspection. Earlier, if you see there used to be a lot of every day “Why is this being programmed?” “Why is it that not being programmed?”, everyone will have their version of what they think your threshold might be different from my threshold, right? What you think is edgy, someone else might say, Oh, I can tolerate more edgy, right? So I think that it’s important to understand that it’s a broad spectrum that we program to. And there’s something for everyone. And that is how we approach programming.
Netflix introduced ad tier in 12 countries in November 2022, any plans to launch an ad tier in India?
There is nothing on the India front right now. Particularly because we are growing so well in SVOD, we have great momentum.
Netflix mobile plans were introduced to drive in affordability, how are they growing in comparison to TV?
TV is seeing great momentum. When we did the price recalibration, we changed the prices across plans. Our basic TV plan is where we had a 60% price adjustment because we also believe that the Netflix experience is the TV experience. This is why we invest a lot of our efforts in our tech and product side, even the way we bring stories to life, we invest in the best technicians, you know, the best cameras, the best equipment or specs, quality specs. So I think we believe that a 10-foot experience is the best way to experience Netflix, but we have the optionality of a mobile plan. We have different pricing and plans. But TV plans are something where we are growing very heavily.
How have production costs evolved with rising inflation?
I think the cost of production has fundamentally risen across the market. But there is also a certain kind of rationalization that’s beginning to come in. I’m hearing that a lot of platforms are readjusting the number of titles they’re doing or the budgets that they work at. I think that is not something that we are doing at Netflix at all, I think, right-sizing is important, We stand for high-quality storytelling, and we know what it takes to run all these multiple productions. But right-sizing is very important. And that is the kind of conversations that we also have with our producing partners, where investment needs to be commensurate with the number of people watching. Success on streaming, is a function of any story done at the right investment, capturing the largest set of audience.
This month Open AI launched Sora which could completely revolutionise video production. How will it change production for streaming companies?
I think, technology is changing so fast that you don’t even know what else is out there. So it’s very fast evolving.At the end of the day, it’s important to understand that the fundamentals that will remain the same. It is all about storytelling, people thinking of ideas, and, bringing them to life.
Published on February 29, 2024
