Netflix: “Amazon paid too much for Top Gear trio”
September 7, 2015
Netflix’s Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt has said that rival Amazon Prime has paid far too much to get Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May to make a new car show for them.
“We have past episodes of Top Gear, so we have a pretty good gauge of what audiences like,” Hunt told Digital Spy. “Our buying decisions tend to be somewhat data-driven. We have a lot of data to get the deals we want, so there we go. Clearly it wasn’t worth the money to make the deal… I think they sold themselves for way more money [than they’re worth].”
With Clarkson, Hammond and May having a £160 million (€219m) budget to make just 36 hour-long episodes, the team’s new motoring show will have £4.4 million to spend per show.
Hunt added that Netflix is unfazed by Amazon’s significant spending power. “We’re much bigger, so we have bigger cheques to write,” he said of Netflix’s place in the market. “There might be other people ranting, but we’re still in a good place.”