The Streaming Wars Speed Up As Amazon Moves Forward With Original Films

As Netflix , Amazon, and Hulu continue to jockey for market share, it's become clearer and clearer that the key to dominance in the streaming market lies in compelling original content. Netflix led the way with original TV—House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, and Arrested Development in 2013—while Amazon and Hulu have tried to catch up with more recent productions (though Amazon has made a strong showing so far with the Emmy-winning Transparent). Even as streaming services churn out more and more TV, they're also turned to a new product: movies.

Yesterday, Amazon completed negotiations to finance Desired Moments, a Kristen Wiig-led dark comedy directed by Tom Kuntz, with plans to start production in January. The project is one of the most high-profile of Amazon Studio's in-house productions and signals the beginnings of a plan to create up to 12 movies a year the company announced in January, when it hired independent producer Ted Hope. Amazon hasn't announced a release schedule for Desired Moments, but it's likely that the release will follow the model Hope outlined in January, in which films will be available for Prime subscribers four to eight weeks after their theatrical debut.

For now, Amazon's plan looks a lot like playing catch up to Netflix, which has its first three movies scheduled for release in the coming months (Cary Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation on October 16, Adam Sandler's Ridiculous Six on December 11, and a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel sometime in early 2016). Netflix's films will premiere on the service simultaneously to a theatrical release—a key consideration for Beasts of No Nation, with which Netflix hopes to enter the awards race. Netflix's goals are certainly ambitious, and because Netflix infamously refuses to give out viewership information on its original programming, the immediate results will be hard to gauge. A few Oscar, or even Golden Globe, nominations could put the studio on the map and make other studios reckon with the structure of their VOD pipelines, but Hollywood might not adjust that quickly. Netflix could spend years producing original content before lands a major hit.

Amazon's amped-up production schedule guarantees that Netflix won't be the only brand on the market. As the proliferation of TV on streaming has shown, Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix have all started to invest heavily in original programming and big streaming deals, while also trying to better define their service's brand. Amazon's film slate, like its TV slate, makes it look like a home for higher brow indie comedy (see Transparent, Desired Moments, a deal with Woody Allen), but it's also making more than a few swings in other directions (see the alternate reality thriller, The Man in the High Castle). As services continue to sign directors and writers on for longer commitments, those identities will surely begin to solidify. And then, the idea that the place that once sold you books and kitchenware is now functionally a movie studio might not seem so surreal.