NBCUniversal Paid $500 Million To Snag ‘The Office’ From Netflix
By Ethan Anderton/June 26, 2019 8:30 am EST
If it seems weird that NBCUniversal had to pay for a show that originally aired on NBC, that’s because the show was produced by Universal Television, a different division of NBCUniversal, and in association with Deedle-Dee Productions and Reveille Productions.
The determining factor ended up being an auction for the streaming rights to The Office. Netflix came in with an offer of $90 million a year for the rights to all nine seasons of the series, but NBCUniversal came in with the offer of $100 million a year, and that was enough to take the cake.
This could very well be the future for the most popular shows that are available on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. It’s likely that WarnerMedia will face the same decision when the deal for every episode of Friends expires at Netflix again. The company has their own streaming service in the works, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they wanted to have exclusive rights to the popular NBC sitcom for themselves.
The good news is that The Office fans will soon have another show from creator Greg Daniels with Steve Carell in the lead. It’s called Space Force, and the two created the show together. Will it make up for the lack of The Office in the Netflix library? We’ll find out in about a year and a half.
