Netflix Giving $100 Million For COVID-19 Relief in Creative Community

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Netflix is donating $100 million to help offset losses suffered in the creative community from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the company announced today.

“The Covid-19 crisis is devastating for many industries, including the creative community. Almost all television and film production has now ceased globally -- leaving hundreds of thousands of crew and cast without jobs. These include electricians, carpenters and drivers, many of whom are paid hourly wages and work on a project-to-project basis,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.

“This community has supported Netflix through the good times, and we want to help them through these hard times, especially while governments are still figuring out what economic support they will provide. So we've created a $100 million fund to help with hardship in the creative community.

“Most of the fund will go towards support for the hardest hit workers on our own productions around the world. We're in the process of working out exactly what this means, production by production. This is in addition to the two weeks pay we've already committed to the crew and cast on productions we were forced to suspend last week.

According to Sarandos, $15 million of the fund will go to third parties and non-profits providing emergency relief to out-of-work crew and cast in countries where the streaming giant has a large production base.

“In the United States and Canada non-profits already exist to do this work. We will be donating $1 million each to the SAG-AFTRA Covid-19 Disaster Fund, the Motion Picture and Television Fund and the Actors Fund Emergency Assistance in the US, and $1 million between the AFC and Fondation des Artistes,” Sarandos said.

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