Netflix is buying the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) and rights to the writer’s complete catalog, together with classics like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach, the corporate announced. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed (and are topic to regulatory approval), however three years in the past Netflix paid “nine figures” for the rights to 16 of Dahl’s works, in line with The Hollywood Reporter. In any occasion, it possible represents certainly one of Netflix’s largest acquisitions up to now.
News of the acquisition began effervescent up yesterday following a Bloomberg report. Netflix has large plans for Dahl’s works, together with “the creation of a unique universe across animated and live actions films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more,” wrote Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and RDSC managing director (and Dahl’s grandson) Luke Kelly.
The firms revealed that director Taika Waititi and screenwriter Phil Johnston are engaged on a sequence based mostly on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory world. Netflix can also be working with Sony and Working Title on an adaptation of Matilda The Musical.
The acquisition seems to go properly past Netflix’s previous content material offers, through which it merely licensed content material from others. It famously did so with Marvel, then ended up canceling Daredevil and different Marvel reveals when it could not come to phrases with Disney, which was planning on the time to launch rival service Disney+.
With Roald Dahl’s catalog, it guarantees to “bring these timeless tales to more audiences in new formats… [while] maintaining their unique spirit and their universal themes of surprise and kindness,” Sarandos and Dahl wrote. “These stories and their messages of the power and possibility of young people have never felt more pertinent.” Last 12 months, the corporate issued an apology on its website for Dahl’s historical past of antisemitic statements, as Bloomberg famous.
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