Netflix Planning At Least Five New Shows A Year To Outdo HBO

Netflix has some pretty ambitious goals ahead of them. They're constantly adding new content to their back catalog, and are always on the lookout for more. Plus, they have their first original series, House of Cards, premiering soon, with another original series, Arrested Development, coming later. Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, says that they want to launch at least five new original shows a year in order to compete with HBO.GQ posted up a profile of the company, where they talked with Sarandos about the future of Netflix and where its headed. Sarandos has $300 million in his budget that's set aside for original content, which has already brought in three new original projects: House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, and Arrested Development.

What's perhaps the most interesting thing that Sarandos said during the interview, was that the goal of Netflix "is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." Sarandos says that Netflix is able to pump out original content in a more timely manner since they commit to a full season of a new show, rather than create a pilot and see where it goes from there, a concept that's rare in the television business.

Netflix's hefty goal of beating out HBO means that we should be seeing a lot of great stuff from the streaming service this year and beyond, and all that really remains is to see if Netflix customers buy into the new original content, but as long as Netflix doesn't pull another Quikster, we think they'll be fine.

[via GQ]