In the wake of the Kevin Spacey & Louis C.K’s sexual misconduct scandal, Netflix was forced to take a stand and cut ties with the two actors, but not before losing out on a shit ton of money. According to a report by Bloomberg, Netflix says they lost out on $39 million from their forth quarter earnings because of "unreleased material” that wasn't released.
While the streaming video giant didn’t provide details of what that included, production of Kevin Spacey’s “House of Cards” was postponed in November after the actor became embroiled in scandal, and he was eventually fired. Meanwhile, Louis C.K's second stand-up special on Netflix was also cancelled in midst of his scandal.
However while Netflix lost out on all that dough, they definitely didn't lose out on subscribers last year. It was just revealed yesterday that the streaming service pulled in 8.3 million new subscribers at the end of 2017. Those numbers include almost 2 million of U.S. members, proving that a good chunk of new subscribers are coming from overseas in Europe and Latin America.
In addition, Bloomberg reports that Netflix will be spending more than $8 billion on programming and will increase its content to have more non-English series, with anime and local language production. They also plan to release a series of short stand-up specials throughout the year, which you can peep some of the comedians who’ll be involved right here.
To avoid such losses moving forward, Netflix says they plan on asking actors/talent to include clauses in their contracts pledging to behave themselves and buying insurance to cover damages in these situations.