Netflix Is Reportedly Planning a Price Hike After the Ongoing Hollywood Actors’ Strike Ends 6q3au Entertainment News

The report suggests that the price increase will take effect in the US and Canada before spreading elsewhere. 4v666w

Written by Rahul Chettiyar, Edited by Ketan Pratap | Updated: 4 October 2023 12:43 IST

Netflix Is Reportedly Planning a Price Hike After the Ongoing Hollywood Actors’ Strike Ends

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ @freestocks 6d64y

The Hollywood actors' union is still trying to negotiate a fair deal with major studios

Highlights

The last Netflix price hike was in January 2022; costs climbed by $1–$2
Increasing ad-free costs makes the ad-ed tiers look more appealing
Instead of raising prices, Netflix has cracked down on -sharing

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January 2022, we can expect it to go up by $1 to $2 (about Rs. 83 to Rs. 166) for a monthly plan. Before that, Netflix also introduced its cheaper ad-ed plan, costing $6.99 (about Rs. 582), which is still unavailable in India.

While other international streaming platforms such as 6 million new subscribers, as of July, taking the total to 238 million . The WSJ report suggests that costs of major streaming platforms have shot up by 25 percent, as a means to make a profit and lead more price-conscious customers to their low-cost ad-ed plans. It's not surprising for the company to try and match the price pools set by its competitors, with the leading one in the US being Disney+ at $13.99 (about Rs. 1,165). Raising the cost of ad-free tiers also makes the cheaper ad-ed plans look more appealing.

It's unclear exactly when the new prices will be issued, but currently, the ad-free Standard tier costs $15.49 (about Rs. 1,289) per month in the US, while the plan is set at $19.99 (about Rs. 1,664) monthly, allowing you to stream content at up to four screens at the same time.

Last week, the Writers' Guild of America (Hollywood studios, in an effort to earn fair paychecks and to fight back against unregulated use of AI in screenwriting. Among those studios were the aforementioned Netflix and other major streaming services, all of which will now be forced to share streaming data with the WGA — specifically, the hours streamed — so writers and actors can assess how well a movie or show performed and collect residuals on them. It's similar to TV broadcasts, but the advent of online streaming made it so workers weren't making any additional money beyond the initial payment. Meanwhile, the SAG-AFTRA (actors' union) is still on strike and trying to negotiate a fair deal with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers).

In April, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos claimed that the streamer was ‘better prepared than most' studios in the event that a strike went through. Keeping disruptions to the minimum was its large slate of content, thanks to its penchant for planning out releases long before they're ever revealed to the public. It makes sense for Netflix to wait until the strikes end so they can raise their prices, given there's not much promise of new content besides the ones they've already shown throughout their TUDUM events.

However, as actors and writers return to work, not only can they justify the price hike, but they will finally be able to promote the films and hold interviews like they used to. For the uninitiated, actors under the SAG-AFTRA union aren't allowed to promote their films or shows nor work on them during the strike period, which has caused several major projects like Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse to get delayed.

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