With rumor spreading that Apple wants to boost its online store profile with exclusive content, the bar keeps getting higher. Netflix has just proved that its strategy is working with record results, while Amazon Prime is pushing the bar higher for content with the news that it is producing a version of the classic Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman book “Good Omens.”
Netflix’s results saw the company generate $8.3 billion in revenue for 2016 from its global operations. That puts it at 35% year-over-year growth with 19 million new members pushing it to over 93 million subscribers, across 10 years of the company’s existence.
Amazon wants to push Prime, along with Echo, Alexa, and its other services to anyone it can. It grabbed the Top Gear team to make “Grand Tour” which has been a huge global hit despite largely consisting of a British man moaning about porn and an American racing driver moaning about any car he has to drive. Now, it is bringing Good Omens to small screens in a co-production deal with BBC, and they will air the show in the UK.
Good Omens will attract sci-fi and fantasy fans, with the collaboration between the two authors one of the most requested film projects that never made it to screen. There is a BBC radio edition! The basis for the Amazon Prime six-parter is described by Neil Gaiman, as “the funniest novel we could write about the end of the world, populated with angels and demons, not to mention an eleven-year-old Antichrist, witchfinders and the four horse people of the Apocalypse. It became many people’s favorite book. Three decades later, it’s going to make it to the screen. I can’t think of anyone we’d rather make it with than BBC Studios, and I just wish Sir Terry were alive to see it.”
Photo credit: Netflix
Sources: Netflix shareholder letter (January 18, 2017) / Amazon press release
