If you picture all of the offices at Netflix headquarters resembling the giant gold-filled vault of Scrooge McDuck, there's only a mild amount of mental hyperbole happening. The streaming giant has released its quarterly earnings report, and for the Q3 period in 2016, Netflix managed to rake in over $2.15 billion. Three months. $2.15 billion.
To those of you who have managed to avoid curling up into a ball long enough to finish this story, this is definitely a record best for Netflix, and it's quite the uptick from the $1.58 billion earned during Q3 2015. The $1.96 billion brought in during the second quarter of 2016 was impressive enough, and improving on that is quite the accomplishment. What's more, 40% of that total came from international markets, proving that its global initiative was an excellent idea for the company. As you might expect, all future predictions for Netflix's success are quite the opposite of bleak.
In the earnings report, Netflix gives the bulk of the credit to the releases of the surprise summer smash Stranger Things, which quickly became one of the company's most popular original series, and Season 2 of the critically acclaimed crime saga Narcos, which has already been granted a two-season renewal. As well, other highly anticipated dramas such as Baz Luhrmann's The Get Down and Marvel's Luke Cage were namechecked, with the latter playing a big and fondly embraced role in diversifying live-action comic book media.
Netflix is making a lot of this money through its TV side, obviously, which means the company has taken some major flak for how depleted its licensed film library has gotten. Some of that is balanced by the original films Netflix is producing and how the company is challenging the norm when it comes to theatrical releases and other staid entertainment trends. (Getting more of its shows out on Blu-ray will only help the financial side, too.) But with an increasingly widening focus on crafting and owning original projects, customers will likely have to get used to this from Netflix for the long-term. And considering Netflix will have earned around $8 billion in 2016, getting used to it apparently isn't a big deal for most people.
Many thought that Netflix was in some kind of peak-existence trouble during the second quarter of this year after a shockingly low number of new subscribers were reported. (1.68 million compared to 6.74 million from Q1 and 5.59 million from Q4 2015.) But a big part of that decrease probably came out of the price hike finally hitting everyone who had been grandfathered in on lower rates. Now that prices are stable and should be for the foreseeable future, it's business as usual, with the new customer number jumping up to 3.57 million, comparable to a year ago.
To see what other new shows and movies are coming soon to the streaming service to keep your money flowing in, check out our premiere schedules for both the rest of 2016 and all of 2017.
