Netflix’s 2025 Preview: Even With ‘Stranger Things,’ Ben Affleck, John Mulaney and More Than 190 Titles, the World’s Biggest Streamer Still Sees Itself as an Underdog
At one point during Netflix’s 75-minute preview of its 2025 slate of programming on Wednesday, chief content officer Bela Bajaria stood on the stage of the Egyptian Theater in front of the words “You’re Not Ready for What’s Next.” The message was meant as both standard PR hype for what Bajaria promised “could be our biggest year ever,” and as a wink at how often Netflix’s biggest hits — “Squid Game,” “Baby Reindeer,” “The Night Agent” — seemingly come out of nowhere.
The slogan could also be seen as a portent of Netflix’s continued dominance of the modern entertainment industry. The company just reported cracking more than 300 million subscribers worldwide in its latest quarter, a dizzying lead over every other media company’s streamers that sent the stock price scraping near $1,000 per share. And Netflix’s achieved that milestone by continuing to buck the trends that just about every other media company have been chasing for the past quarter century, by investing in original TV series and feature films rather than obsessively chasing established, triple-A IP.
More from Variety
Bajaria hit that theme early in her presentation, citing a recent New York Times video essay entitled “Is Creativity Dead?” as an example of the conventional wisdom that all Hollywood makes nowadays are “sequels, reboots or spinoffs.”
“It’s easy to try and imitate what’s already worked,” she said. “But that’s a trap. Audiences don’t want the same thing all the time. Neither do creators. So we don’t, either.”
To reinforce that idea, she unveiled a “hero video” about an office worker who fires up Netflix while bored in a meeting and finds herself plunged inside several of the streamers biggest original hits, including “Stranger Things,” “Love Is Blind,” “Black Mirror” and “Emily in Paris” — all of which are returning for 2025. Later, she welcomed Ben Affleck to introduce a teaser for “Rip,” the latest film produced by Artists Equity, his company with Matt Damon. The gritty crime thriller from writer-director Joe Carnahan — which stars Affleck and Damon as cops who find a giant stash of stolen money — is the kind of mid-budget movie for adults that legacy studios just are not making anymore.
“We’ve found some really exciting partners who are really interested in not just what has been but what could be at Netflix,” Affleck raved.
Matt and Ross Duffer similarly took the opportunity during their preview of the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” to talk up their next two Netflix shows from their production company, Upside Down Pictures: “The Boroughs” (about seniors combatting the supernatural in a retirement community) and “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” (about a horror filled week leading up to a wedding).
“All of this to say: we’re going to be hanging around at Netflix, which has been our home for the past 10 years,” Ross Duffer said. “If you want to tell original stories like we do, this is really the place to be.”
Bajaria also hammered what has become a regular refrain for Netflix, that its definition of originality is an expansive one. “With more than 700 million people watching, we can’t just be one thing,” she said. “We need to be the best version of everything.” (Per a spokesperson, that mind-boggling viewership stat is an internal estimate extrapolating an average of just over two household members per subscription.)
By “everything,” by the way, Bajaria meant everything. Press were given a booklet containing more than 190 global titles for 2025 across scripted TV, feature films, reality series, documentary series and films, live events, and games — including the return of the fan event Tudum, which will stream live from Los Angeles on May 31. Following the media preview, Netflix sent an embargoed list of dozens of date announcements, teasers and preview stills that will flood the internet today in what’s become the company’s standard shock-and-awe promotional strategy.
With so much to crow about, however, it was striking that at times Netflix’s presentation felt defensive rather than celebratory.
“I know some people say you can’t make quality TV or film if you do more than four titles a year,” Bajaria said. “But we can, and we do — plus a whole lot more.” Later, while touting the global reach and local focus of its programming, she continued this one-sided argument: “I know some of you call it ‘brave’ or a ‘risky bet’ if a network does one show that’s not in English. What do you call it if you do a hundred great shows that aren’t in English?”
Bajara seemed especially frustrated by what she called “one of the biggest myths about Netflix” — namely, “we don’t do ‘prestige TV’ — or we don’t do as much of it as we used to.”
“The only thing we do know is that a lot of people who brag about making prestige TV have a very narrow audience,” she continued, throwing a bit of shade at competitors like FX and HBO. “Netflix is different. With an audience as big as ours, we’ve never tried to be famous for just one thing.”
The overall effect was to present Netflix’s self-image not as the undisputed champion of the industry, but as the perpetually under-appreciated underdog. The company has weathered its share of snark and skepticism, especially as it’s abrogated some of its sacrosanct precepts — we don’t do ads, we don’t do sports, we don’t do live events. And while titles built on established properties like “Wednesday” and “The Witcher” remain the exception rather than the rule, Netflix’s growing embrace of big-time IP — from the WWE to “Cobra Kai,” the Adam Sandler sequel “Happy Gilmore 2” to Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” — make plain that its ever-expanding pursuit of audiences needs the familiar as well as the new.
Comedian John Mulaney keenly captured the paradox Netflix finds itself in — at once the leader of the establishment and its biggest disruptor — during his announcement of his new weekly talk show, “Everybody’s Live in L.A.”
“We will have a host in a suit taking calls from viewers,” he said. “It’s Netflix’s commitment to embracing the 20th century. There is absolutely nothing new about what I’m doing but, by taking a lot of elements other people have already done and doing them out of order, it feels new and that’s what’s important.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
