It’s been widely reported that Netflix plans to spend a staggering $8 billion on its content this year, with the company’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, saying that a full 85 percent of that spend will be on original offerings. Today, Netflix announced the existence of NX, a new social channel that will promote the service’s science fiction and fantasy titles. In design, NX appears to be like @strongblacklead, a Twitter account that highlights diversity across the subscription service’s television shows and films — it’s a kind of sub-channel, breaking out specific types of Netflix content for a splintered audience with specific preferences.
The NX announcement coincided with the reveal of Netflix’s specific plans for titles involving or adapting comic book writer Mark Millar. Netflix bought the rights to Millar’s publishing house Millarworld in 2017, and published an initial comic book in June. Today’s announcement provided new details about Netflix’s Millarworld-related content.
For TV, that includes Jupiter’s Legacy, which appears to be about millennial superheroes living in the shadow of their superpowered elders, based on Millar’s comic books of the same name. American Jesus, another comic book adaptation, follows a 12-year-old boy who realizes he’s been reincarnated as Jesus Christ. Millar is also involved in three planned Netflix original films: Empress, Huck, and Sharkey The Bounty Hunter. (Those are about a queen on the run through space, a boy named Huck who uses his special abilities to do good, and a space bounty hunter named... Sharkey.)
“My wife Lucy and I are eleven months into our jobs at Netflix and it’s everything we hoped for to the power of ten,” Millar said in a statement. “To see a movie based on your work every couple of years is incredibly exciting, but to see them all happening at once like this and with talent this high-end is just off the scale.” Netflix is betting big on Millarworld, attempting to turn it into an extended universe.