Nearly seven months after the Hollywood strike was resolved, momentum is still not building for the entertainment industry. “Stay 25” has become an unofficial slogan among those who work in the industry.
But the global market for ordering new TV shows is starting to heat up, with two companies leading the way: Netflix and Amazon.
Netflix approved more scripted TV projects in the first quarter of this year than any time since 2022, according to research firm Ampere Analysis. The firm said it was Amazon's most active quarter since Ampere began tracking market activity five years ago.
Many of its competitors are still taking a more cautious approach. As a result, Netflix and Amazon accounted for 53% of all scripted TV series orders between major studios in the first three months of the year, according to Ampere.
Most of the series orders are coming from overseas: Netflix is ​​particularly active in the UK, Germany, Spain and South Korea, while Amazon is investing heavily in India, according to the study.
Netflix and Amazon also increased the number of projects they bought in the U.S. compared to the end of 2023, but at a more moderate rate. Netflix saw its most active quarter in the U.S. since the first quarter of last year, while Amazon saw its strongest quarter since last spring, according to the study.
“We're in a post-strike situation where there's still a bit of uncertainty,” said Alice Thorpe, research manager at Ampere. “Netflix and Amazon are really the bellwethers in this situation.”
Representatives for Netflix and Amazon declined to comment.
The two giants with tech roots are in stronger financial positions than their competitors: Netflix made more than $5 billion in profits last year, and its stock price has soared in the past year. Amazon's first-quarter profits beat Wall Street expectations, and the company's stock price has soared in the past year.
Wall Street has been far more skeptical of its competitors, and in recent years, big media companies have been trying to cut costs to make their streaming services profitable.
Some companies, including Comcast and Paramount, have ordered more domestic projects than they did in the second half of last year, and Amazon and Netflix combined accounted for about a third of all U.S. scripted TV series ordered by major studios in the first three months of the year, according to Ampere.
Yet, that volume is still significantly down from its highs just a few years ago.
For much of the past decade, television production boomed in a period known as Peak TV: About 600 scripted shows premiered in the U.S. in 2022, more than triple the number two decades earlier.
But in mid-2022, major studios began pulling back on their investments as Wall Street began to frown on the investment-at-all-costs strategy to funnel money into streaming services, a slowdown exacerbated by last year's actors' and writers' strike.
As a clear illustration of this shift, the number of TV series submitted for Emmy nominations has plummeted this year: 34% fewer dramas and 23% fewer comedies than last year. Compared to 2022, these declines are nearly 40%. (Emmy nominations are announced on July 17.)
It remains to be seen whether all studios, especially in the US, will start investing aggressively again.
“It would be interesting to see some more movement from the major studios, but I think that's going to happen fairly soon,” said Thorpe, the Ampere research analyst. She said she doesn't expect buying to “continue at such low levels.”
Union leaders, meanwhile, are urging entertainment workers to remain patient, a point Greg Iwinski, a television screenwriter and council member for the Writers Guild of America's Eastern chapter, made at a conference in Austin, Texas, last month.
“It's easy to be scared, 'It's all dried up, nothing's happening, nothing's going to happen,'” he said. “There has to be TV shows in 2026. There have to be TV shows, there have to be movies. They have to exist unless all the companies that we've negotiated with decide to stop existing.”