Entertainment Companies Spend $121 Billion on Original Content in 2019

U.S. media and entertainment companies spent over $120 billion on original content, including movies and TV shows, in 2019, per an analysis conducted by Variety Intelligence Platform.  It’s a whopping sum fueled by the increasing investment of players including AT&T’s HBO, which expanded its production of original content by 50%, to 150 hours. To maintain its market share, Netflix increased their content spend by $3 billion as the streamer increased its content volume by over 50% versus 2018. Of the total amount spent on content, five mega companies–AT&T, ViacomCBS, Netflix, Comcast and Disney–accounted for approximately $87.4 billion, or 72.5% of the total spend. Disney itself was the greatest content spender, accounting for nearly one quarter of the entire amount, splashing out $27.8b across their studios, networks and SVOD services.