After Disney had Anne Hathaway open its Upfront and Amazon kicked off with Oprah Winfrey, Netflix got in on the act with Jennifer Lopez.
“I’m Jennifer Lopez,” the pop star and actress said. “And I’m standing next to Jennifer Lopez,” joked Brett Goldstein, who stars alongside JLo in feature film Office Romance, which premieres on June 5.
“It’s actually f*cking mental,” the Ted Lasso star added.
The pair also leaned into the rumors of their off-screen romance. “It felt great to come back to a rom-com, it’s been too long and this one might be my favorite one I’ve ever done,” Lopez said.
The duo was followed by Amy Reinhard, President, Advertising, who crowed about the number of ad subscribers it now has, the launch of ad tiers in 15 news markets including Sweden and Indonesia as well as some delicious chat about “full funnel results”.
Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria revealed that it would be launching 40 scripted series this year from its U.S. slate including 27 returning shows.
It also revealed a raft of new titles including Calabasas, the Kim Kardashian-produced teen drama, as revealed by Deadline, Myron Bolitar from Harlan Coben, David E. Kelley and Kyle Long, also revealed by Deadline, The Retrievals, a series from Molly Smith Metzler, based on the New York Times podcast, once again revealed by Deadline, and fantasy drama Barbaric.
The streamer pulled in all of the big guns with top talent on stage including Millie Bobby Brown, Florence Pugh and The Hunting Wives’ Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman. Showing off? Never.
“I got my first big break playing Eleven when I was 11. Netflix is where I grew up, where I learned to act, where I learned to produce, and I’ve had a chance to play some pretty iconic characters along the way; a girl with a shaved head and telekinesis powers, an orphan crossing a robot wasteland to find her family, a detective who outsmarts her famous brother and a princess who battles a dragon,” Brown said. “Now I’m just about to star in my first rom com, Just Picture It. It turns out love is a lot more like the Upside Down than you think.”
Snow and Akerman shared a trailer for season two of The Hunting Wives after a short honky tonk performance. “Season one of The Hunting Wives got a lot of people talking, because everything is bigger in Texas,” said Akerman.
Pugh, meanwhile, is starring in East of Eden, the streamer’s limited series adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel. She said that when she first met Zoe Kazan, who has written the series, in 2002, “we realized that we shared a very specific passion about one character in particular, Cathy Ames. She is the engine in our version of this story”.
Of course, don’t stress, there was some sports chat, it’s the Upfronts, obviously. Elle Duncan went through its laundry list of recently acquired sports including the NFL (the LA Rams will host the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving Eve), The Westminster Dog Show (yes, it counts as a sport) and the Women’s World Cup, which will stream on the service in 2027 and 2031.
Talking of the Women’s World Cup, to promote its upcoming feature film The 99’ers, it brought out the 1999 winning U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, including Mia Hamm.
Jimmy Kimmel’s annual roast at the Disney Upfront is always one of the highlights of the week. In recent years, Seth Meyers has been similarly taking the piss out of the television business and advertisers at the NBC Upfront.
Netflix, in turn, brought out Pete Davidson. The former SNL star was there to promote Netflix’s increasing activity in the podcast space, but obviously, he did what Davidson does.
“I’m going to read what I’ve been told I’m allowed to say, so pretend like this is organic,” he said. “I’ve been on Netflix a lot lately; I was at The Roast of Kevin Hart, I was at Netflix is a Joke and I also play the octopus in Remarkably Bright Creatures.”
The joke didn’t land but Davidson was convinced that it would play in this “weird fucking building”.
“If you’re starting to get sick of me, that’s cool. I can’t believe I’m still f*cking reading this… [Netflix] want you to know they have podcasts.
NBCUniversal, Fox, Amazon, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery all like to show off how much talent they are working with.
Netflix, too. The cast of Outer Banks, including Chase Stokes, Jonathan Daviss, Madison Bailey and Carlacia Grant, said goodbye ahead of their fifth and final season. Alix Earle, star of forthcoming Netflix reality series Earle Meets World, Hasan Minhaj, John Cena and Eric Andre all played Pop Culture Jeopardy! with Michelle Buteau.
The Four Seasons stars Tina Fey and Will Forte closed out the event. “We’re bringing Netflix’s most locally available stars closer to you, our advertisers,” Fey said before Forte belted out his own version of KPop Demon Hunters hit single “Golden”.
See Deadline’s complete coverage of the Netflix Upfront here.
