Netflix Reportedly Spending $30 Million Per ‘Stranger Things’ Episode as Stock Crashes

Netflix loss $50 billion worth of market cap and its stock plummeted after reporting its first subscriber loss in more than a decade. The company’s PR hellscape got worse this week on reports that it’s spending $30 million per episode on the fourth season of its flagship series Stranger Things.

According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, the company has been looking to scale back costs after its stock market shares closed down more than 35 percent this week due to a loss of subscribers in its first quarter. To counter the high costs of producing shows like Stranger Things, the streaming giant has reportedly looked to filling its library with lower-budget, non-scripted shows.

Per the WSJ:

The holy grail for Netflix is to find shows like “Squid Game” that are inexpensive and yet become hits. “Virgin River,” at a cost of roughly $3 million per episode, is a relatively low-budget soap opera with no big stars, but has been a huge success for Netflix. That means it is more efficient than pop-culture hit “Bridgerton,” which costs more than three times as much, say people familiar with the streamer’s efficiency measurement.

Under-the-radar, relatively low-cost hits are necessary to balance out the costs for big-ticket programming such as the special-effects-filled show “Stranger Things,” whose new season has a per-episode cost of $30 million, according to people close to the show.

Certain genres of programming have fallen out of favor at Netflix. The company has moved away from talk shows and musicals, after they failed to perform, executives said. By contrast, the company is investing in more documentaries and unscripted fare, which are cost-efficient and tend to perform well.

As John Nolte of Breitbart News recently profiled, the company spent upwards of $300 million to acquire the talents of showrunner Ryan Murphy only to come out short in terms of viewership and noteriety.

“The closest Murphy has come is his limited series Hollywood, which fizzled out with just 14 million hours viewed,” noted Nolte. “Something called Halston crashed and burned with just 3.5 million total hours viewed. The Prom and The Boys in the Band were so unpopular that they didn’t even rank.”

Indeed, multiple streaming platforms, from Disney+ to Amazon Prime have taken a hit in the stock market as they compete for customers. Amazon Prime, for instance, found itself at the center of controversy in 2021 when it was revealed that its upcoming Lord of the Rings series will cost upwards of $465 million for just one season of the show in contrast to the original Peter Jackson series, which cost somewhere around $280 million.