Carrie Bradshaw And The Sex And The City Ladies Are Coming To Netflix
And just like that, "Sex and the City" is being licensed to Netflix by Warner Bros. Discovery, parent company of HBO and the owner of its own streaming service, Max. The ground-breaking series about 30-something single women struggling to find love and happiness in '90s New York is finally making its way to the streaming platform that started it all in early April of 2024.
The licensing deal includes all six seasons of the series, but it does not include the two feature films or the spin-off series "And Just Like That..." which streams exclusively on Max. The original show will stream on Netflix only in the U.S. and several European countries, per Variety. "Sex and the City" originally aired from 1998-2004, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, and Kim Cattrall. All of the actresses except Cattrall are series regulars in the recent reboot, though Cattrall did appear briefly in the season 2 finale.
The 2024 digital media market is diverse, and every streaming platform has gotten to know its user base. The popular drama series "This is Us" wasn't thriving on Disney+, whose user base prioritizes Marvel, animation, and Star Wars. After being sold to Netflix last year, it found a new life and new demand for a seventh season or spin-off.
Sales like these also allow studios to focus on producing new content that is exclusive to their own platforms — shows like "Ahsoka," "Loki," and "The Mandalorian" — while licensing old, pre-streaming IP to other platforms like Netflix. Just when you thought the streaming wars were over, you couldn't help but wonder if the battle had only just begun.
Sex and the City will head to Netflix in April
HBO wouldn't win any awards for offering the most consistent streaming service. Launched as HBO Go in 2010, Time Warner shifted the name and platform host to HBO Now in 2015. When Time Warner was acquired by AT&T and renamed WarnerMedia, the streaming service became HBO Max in 2020. But it wasn't long before AT&T sold WarnerMedia, Warner Bros. Discovery was born, and HBO Max was rebranded as simply Max. These many name changes and IT updates have not saved HBO from financial decline, and the costly rebrand has not paid off. Instead, Max saw a loss of 2.5 million subscribers over a six-month period in 2023 and a 19% decline in shares, per Fortune.
With the prestige television network wanting for money, its best option was to sell one of the most successful HBO shows to Netflix. The sale is a bit of a win-win for HBO; although it loses the exclusivity of one of its most famous shows, it also gains the potential for a newfound following in viewers who don't have a Max subscription. Furthermore, if first-time "Sex and the City" viewers are hungry for more content, they might be driven to Max for the show's spin-off series, "And Just Like That."
Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO's media parent company, first began licensing content to Netflix last year, starting with titles like "Insecure," "Band of Brothers," "The Pacific," "Six Feet Under" and "Ballers," per Variety. "Sex and the City" is by far the most popular title that Netflix has licensed from HBO yet, making this a major sale.
"We are in the business of monetizing content through windows," Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav said on the company's Q3 2023 earnings call, per Variety, adding that "there's a lot of content that's not being consumed heavily on Max, and so those are the easy ones [to license elsewhere]."
Netflix is the 'best buyer' for Sex and the City
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos was asked about licensing TV content in the company's 2023 Q4 earnings meeting, The New York Times reported. His response was enlightening, especially ahead of this sale:
"We've got a rich history of helping break some of TV's biggest hits, like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Walking Dead' or, even more recently, with 'Schitt's Creek,' because of our recommendation, our reach, we can resurrect a show like 'Suits' and turn it into a big pop-culture moment but also generate billions of hours of joy for our members. I think you have to remember, the studios have always been in the business of selling their content to others, including direct competitors, for years. I believe, because, again, of our distribution heft and our recommendation system, that sometimes we can uniquely add more value to the studio's IP than they can. Not all the time but sometimes it does, and we're the best buyer for it."
This statement came just one day before news of "Sex and the City" coming to Netflix broke this week. It sounds like Sarandos is keen to keep courting competitors for their TV offerings.