Ryan Murphy will create shows at Netflix for the next five years. Netflix has been at the forefront of a whole lot of the major trends in distribution in the last five years, on everything from original movies and original TV series to documentaries and stand-up comedy specials. The company has repeatedly extended its business model in new directions, often throwing large amounts of money at well-known creators to bring their work to the streaming service.

A more recent Netflix tactic has been to grab prolific TV showrunners, the ones who have created and run multiple hit series at the same time, and sign them to bring their next shows to Netflix. The streaming service made just such a deal last year with Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder) and now they’ve teamed up with another top TV creator.

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Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and the American Crime Story and American Horror Story franchises, has reached a major deal with Netflix, The New York Times reported late Tuesday. The deal is for five years, worth about $300 million, and will take Murphy away from his longtime home at 21st Century Fox. Murphy will begin with the studio in July.

According to the Times, Disney, which recently agreed to acquire Fox’s TV studio, was seeking to keep Murphy on board, while Amazon courted him as well. As with Rhimes’ deal, all of Murphy’s existing shows will remain on their current networks, including Feud, American Horror Story and Crime Story on FX and the new hit 9-1-1 on Fox. Glee and Nip/Tuck both went off the air years ago. Netflix will be the home of new shows Murphy creates going forward, while Netflix is already streaming American Crime Story and American Horror Story, and had already picked up the upcoming Murphy series The Politician and Ratched.

Will the $300 million deal end up being worth it to Netflix? If Murphy spends the next several years creating as many hits as he has in the last five, it likely will be. It almost represents a coup for Netflix, as Disney prepares to launch its own competing streaming service next year, to poach one of the most prolific creators who had been expected as part of Disney’s stable going forward.

Still, it’s unclear why, aside from the possibility of a more aggressive agent, Murphy got three times as much money as Rhimes, whose deal with Netflix was for $100 million. Murphy begins at Netflix in July. Stay tuned at Screen Rant for more on his upcoming projects.

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Source: New York Times