Last March, the news broke that Netflix had acquired the Ben Affleck-founded AI firm InterPositive, but, as Netflix always is, little was said about the price tag. Now, we finally know what the deal cost, as entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, is here to report.
A $587M Deal
At the time, most of those in the know estimated the deal at around $600M, and it turns out they were pretty on the nose. The firm went to Netflix for $587M. Netflix, of course, did not share this directly themselves. After all, this is the streamer who likes to play their cards close to their chest when it comes to any information at all. However, it was revealed last week as part of the SEC filing process.
InterPositive was founded in 2022 by Ben Afflek, who also served as its CEO. Netflix took over most of the company’s small staff roster as part of the deal, while Afflek himself remained in an advisory role.
The Future of InterPositive and Netflix
Netflix acquired the company mostly as a cost savings exercise, especially for virtual production and its animation lab. Despite some backlash against the use of generative AI in Hollywood, Netflix is reportedly using it for footage enhancement and to add in larger scenes that would be fiscally difficult to bankroll using real extras. In turn, it promises that the money saved is being rolled back into the service itself.
With Netflix feeling rising pressure from Wall Street about its reasonably stagnant subscriber numbers and increasing tendency to refuse to share meaningful information about the company, there seems to be increasing pressure for Netflix to either show more progress or participate in the flurry of M&A deals we’re seeing at the moment. Whether or not the notoriously stubborn streamer will cave to this pressure, however, or continue to do their own thing their own way, remains to be seen.
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