Barack Obama is in Talks To Produce Exclusive Content For Netflix

Imagine my shock as I read this headline: Obama In Talks to Provide Shows for Netflix. I know that we’ve had presidents who started as movie stars, but this seemed odd to me. According to the New York Times:

“Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service, which has nearly 118 million subscribers around the world. The number of episodes and the formats for the shows have not been decided.

Mr. Obama does not intend to use his Netflix shows to directly respond to President Trump or conservative critics, according to people familiar with discussions about the programming. They said the Obamas had talked about producing shows that highlight inspirational stories.”

We don’t know what kind of content they plan to produce, but some ideas people are talking about are Barack Obama moderating conversations that focus on topics that were prevalent during his presidency, or Michelle Obama discussing topics that she championed as First Lady such as nutrition. Obama was critical of the ability of media to spread misinformation and manipulate the truth so that, “everything is true and nothing is true.”

There’s no word on how much Netflix would pay the Obamas since they lack experience, but with companies like Apple and Amazon also interested in getting the Obamas to produce content for them, it probably won’t be pennies. Of course, this is also part of Netflix's plan to grow their original content. I’m intrigued by what kind of content gets produced. I imagine they’ll have some kind of political programming such as the before mentioned conversations, but I wonder if they’ll have any other kind of programming. Maybe they can give us some decent fictional content?