Netflix didn’t end up owning the legendary Warner Bros lot after losing out earlier this year to David Ellison for the Burbank studio, but the streamer is still ploughing ahead to take control of Radford Studio Center in the next several months.
Despite some recent shade thrown by Netflix’s current Sunset Blvd landlord, the long-rumored $400 million plus purchase of the 55-acre Studio City production facility by the Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters-run company is coming together on schedule. Netflix did not respond today to Deadline’s request for remarks on the status of the Radford acquisition. However, a source close to events said “the deal is progressing on the agreed upon timetable and with the agreed upon sets of milestone dates.”
What exactly that timetable and those milestone dates are has been left vague. Late this summer, the streamer was granted more time to look into the bones of Radford and see what the true shape of the place is. Still, even with big layoffs, Peter Rice taking over as Content chief from the fired Bela Bajaria, declining engagement and an ailing stock (which dipped to $63.4 today), the desire at the upper echelon of Netflix for a sprawling studio lot of their own to cement the company’s industry dominance is stronger than ever.
With Hudson Pacific CEO Victor Coleman announcing on a November 5 earnings call that Netflix “had not closed the transaction” on Radford, a real estate monsoon of sorts swelled up this week. Undercutting his own remarks, Coleman added, “they are not deciding to close it until sometime maybe later in the year, or not.”
At present, there haven’t been any required filings with the SEC or L.A. County by Netflix for Radford Still, while the endgame has never really been in doubt since this summer, the fact is negotiations for Radford have been moving in ebbs and flow, I’m told.
“They haven’t signed on the dotted line, that will all likely happen later this year,” a L.A. real estate insider added of where talks between Netflix and the Goldman Sachs-led group that took over the 98-year-old Radford when Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a $1.1. billion loan early this year. “It’s a priority, sure. Remember with renovations and new builds, there’s a lot to put in place too.”
A December 17 stroll around the WB lot by Sarandos and Peters with then WBD CEO David Zaslav when the streamer looked certain to buy the joint wetted the Netflix’s CEO beaks. However, beyond those maters of the universe moments, it has also long been clear to Netflix’s execs that they needed a full service L.A. space of their own for both offices and production – which led to the start of talks with Goldman in April.
As it is, the global HQ of the global streamer right now is a rented hodgepodge of Hudson Pacific-owned Sunset structures and venues that the Netflix has outgrown. With leases on the ICON building and others until 2031, Netflix is one of Hudson Pacific’s biggest customers.
Outside pricey California, Netflix has been building out from renter to owner itself the past few years.
Leaning into incentives offered in other states, the streamer has Netflix Studios Albuquerque, a108-acre campus with 12 soundstages and more in New Mexico. In New York, there’s the six soundstages of Netflix Studios Brooklyn. Next door in New Jersey, the massive nearly 300-acre Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth studio is under construction at a cost of more than $1 billion. The projected 12 sound stages are expected to come online in staggered openings next year and in 2028. Add to all that, just outside London, the streamer’s UK hub of Longcross Studios with its five sound stages
A CBS hub over the decades and once dubbed Republic Studios way back in the day, Radford has “22 stages, 210,000 square feet of office space and 172,737 square feet of support space,” according to its specs. The site of where Seinfeld, Gunsmoke, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show were shot, Radford has a number of current tenants who would obviously need to have their leases bought out if Netflix took over.
After buying Radford in 2021 off what was then ViacomCBS for $1.85 bilion, Hackman and its partners planned to pour big bucks into upgrades and revamps. That all fell apart for the company, who own the likes of the 25-acre Television City on Fairfax and other venues around the world, as production in the home of Hollywood took a downward dive around 2023. Very quickly, once hard to get soundstage space became plentiful — and often empty.
That won’t change overnight at Radford once Netflix takes over, but it will send a very clear message to a town eager for good news and jobs.
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