Netflix is planning price hike after the current Hollywood Actor’s strike ends: Reports

According to new reports, Netflix is planning to raise the price of its subscriptions once the ongoing the Hollywood Actor’s Strike ends. According to the Wall Street Journal, the streaming service will increase the price of the plans in the US and Canada before spreading it globally. While the company hasn’t commented on the price rise officially, it is expected that the price will increase by $1 to $2 for a monthly plan. Netflix had earlier launched its cheapest ad-supported plan which cost $6.99 and which is still unavailable in India.

While other streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime and Disney+ raised their prices to cope up with the financial pressure and curb financial losses, Netflix chose to cut the slack on password sharing among its customers which seems to have worked for Netflix which has gained 6 million subscribers as of July which takes the grand total to 238 million active members. This is due to the increasing price cost of the streaming services which has increased 25% which has made streaming services to introduce new cheaper options which are ad-supported to target the audience which is much more price conscious.

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 Premium 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 called off their 148 day strike against major Hollywood studios after they reached an agreement to fight back against unregulated use of AI in screenwriting. Among those studios were the 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 that writers and actors can assess how well a movie or show is doing and collect residuals on them. It’s similar to how TV broadcasts used to work, but the advent of online streaming made it difficult for the workers to make any additional money beyond the initial payment as such information was not provided to them. 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).

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos claimed:

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 behaviour of planning out releases long before they’re ever revealed to the public.

However, as soon as actors and writers come back to work they will be justified to ask for a higher price as they have missed many days of work and the same goes for the production houses and streaming services that have had many of their high-level projects being delayed indefinitely due to the strikes.

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