Warner Music Close to Netflix Deal That Would Create Movies Around the Label’s Superstars: Report

If you thought we were astatine peak biopic, you whitethorn person been incorrect — arsenic a caller woody suggests you should astir apt expect galore much films and documentaries astir euphony legends successful the future.  

Warner Music Group (WMG) is “close to an agreement” with Netflix to make movies and documentaries based connected the company’s artists and songs, according to Bloomberg. WMG, which unopen down its interior part that produced movie and TV shows earlier this twelvemonth and is looking to outsource that work, the study claimed.   

Speaking astatine the Bloomberg Screentime league connected Wednesday (Oct. 8), WMG CEO Robert Kyncl did not corroborate a pending concern but laid retired galore reasons wherefore the institution should enactment with a planetary streaming platform. “Our institution has a tremendous catalog: Prince, Madonna, Fleetwood Mac,” Kyncl said. “It conscionable goes connected and connected and on. The stories we person are incredible, and they haven’t truly been told. We’re similar Marvel [Comics] for music.” 

Kyncl, who arsenic a Netflix enforcement helped the institution motorboat its streaming work successful 2007, added that “it makes a batch of consciousness for america to spouse with a institution that tin bring it to beingness each astir the world.” Netflix, which has much than 300 cardinal subscribers successful implicit 190 countries, would supply WMG with a monolithic assemblage for video contented without the further costs progressive with theatrical releases.  

Netflix has created galore music-focused documentaries, including Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revenue: A Bob Dylan Story; Miss Americana, a look astatine Taylor Swift’s vocation and idiosyncratic life; Quincy, a past of celebrated shaper and instrumentalist Quincy Jones; and Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé.  

Music biopics person go an progressively fashionable portion of contented arsenic companies person invested billions of dollars successful creator catalogs and sanction and likeness rights. The 2018 movie Bohemian Rhapsody “turbocharged” request for Queen’s catalog and played a relation successful its lofty $1.27 cardinal valuation erstwhile it was purchased by Sony Music successful 2024. The 2022 movie Elvis boosted the worth of the precocious singer’s property from $600 cardinal successful 2020 to $1 cardinal successful 2022, a root told Billboard. Likewise, the upcoming Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen biopics could assistance Sony Music amended its instrumentality connected its investments successful those artists’ catalogs.  

But the clip required to make films means the payoff — synch royalties and accrued streams and vigor play — aren’t immediate. As Natalia Nastaskin, main contented serviceman astatine Primary Wave, told Billboard in 2024, that lag clip could mean the highest of euphony biopics “may instrumentality respective years.” 

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