Why is it that so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology? Almost half of your content for children—I'm talking about minor children now, I'm not talking about teenagers—minor children promotes a transgender ideology agenda. Yet, if you turn on Netflix, you'll find that an enormous amount, and I say this as a parent with three young children, an enormous amount of your children's programming has this ideology and agenda in it. Is this an advocacy position for Netflix? Is this an ideological commitment you have? I mean, why is this...
Senator Hawley, Netflix has no political agenda of any kind. I would tell you that.
Well, then why is your children's program so full of this highly sexualized, highly controversial agenda? I don't understand it. It seems strange to me.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing. Welcome to the witnesses. Mr. Sarandos, if I could just start with you, let's continue to talk a little bit about the labor impacts here if we could. How many US-based employees does Netflix currently employ? Do you know?
Yeah. What about in production roles?
Well, in LA over the last—it's a fluid number—but we've had about 155,000 production jobs on our originals at any given time. I don't know the number exactly. Sorry. I can follow back with your staff, though.
Warner Brothers, how many US production jobs?
Warner Brothers Representative
1:26 ↗
I don't have the exact number, but it would be, I would think, in the 8,000 range.
Okay. Here's my question. If this merger goes through, what's your projection about the amount of domestic production say two years from now? Is it going to be static? Is it going to decline?
It's going to—our production is going to increase. Domestic production to increase. Most of our production is domestic and it will continue to increase. We've recently forecast our content spend independent of this deal to grow to $20 billion. And those, you know, that's a combination of licensing, producing. Now, those licensing dollars compel production as well. That's why it's hard to get an exact number.
Let me show you the data here about US production recently. It's the red line here starting from 2021. You can see it is pretty much straight downward. There's been massive shift in production, as I think Senator Schiff was alluding to just a moment ago, massive shift in production overseas to other foreign jurisdictions leaving the United States. So will you commit to increasing domestic United States production and domestic United States production jobs? Did I hear you just say you would?
Senator Hawley, absolutely. It's in our business plan and it's in our long-term operating DNA. I will point out, sir, respectfully, that chart is Los Angeles.
Yeah, but it's reflective. This reflects all of US production. US production is not going up, right?
But some of these jobs have moved.
It's going down. These jobs have moved to... Yeah. But the overall numbers are going down. And this is exactly the concern of labor. And without objection, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into a statement for the record from the Teamsters who have major concerns about this deal, as does frankly pretty much every segment of labor, Mr. Sarandos. And what they all say is they're worried that you're going to cut residuals, which is effectively payments. You're going to cut production jobs. So, let's just go through a few commitments here. Will you commit to using union labor for all domestic shoots?
Will you commit to using it in the future for all of your domestic shoots? If this deal goes through?
Senator, we do use—this is the most unionized industry in America, and we use union labor on all our productions.
And you're going to forward. I'm looking for a commitment.
Will you commit to a 45-day or longer theatrical release window for major Warner Brothers films?
Senator Hawley, I just said that I would do that under oath. So, yes.
