Saturday Night Live aired its latest episode last night, hosted by The Crown and First Man star Claire Foy. One of the sketches took aim at Netflix’s enormous effort to produce as much original content as possible.
“In 2019, we’ll have even more programming to choose from because we’ve. gone. crazy.” The mock ad goes on to highlights endless scrolling through the company’s originals, that that once you’ve reached to the bottom of the menu, there’s new content for users to enjoy. Pitch meetings are depicted as Netflix executives throwing money at producers, and mock scenes from ridiculous and “gritty” reboots, prestige dramas with viewership in the single digits, and spinoffs, like Leslie Jones in a Van Getting Batteries.
There’s a grain of truth here — last year, Netflix reportedly planned to spend upwards of $8 billion to expand its library of original content to keep ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and the forthcoming streaming services from Apple and Disney, which are spending their own huge sums.