Amazon recently signed Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May after agreeing to shelve out $250 million over a period of three seasons (36 episodes) for a new automotive TV show. Clarkson will reportedly pocket $14.7 million per-season alone and Amazon beat off competition from Netflix to get Clarkson and co on board.
However, Netflix’s Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt believes that Amazon overpaid for the former Top Gear trio. “We have past episodes of Top Gear, so we have a pretty good gauge of what audiences like,” he told Digital Spy.
“Our buying decisions tend to be somewhat data-driven. We have a lot of data to get the deals we want, so there we go. Clearly it wasn’t worth the money to make the deal… I think they sold themselves for way more money [than they’re worth].”
That said, after Hunt’s quotes went viral on social media, he added in a separate statement that “there is an audience for everything and it is not up to us to judge if Amazon has paid too much or not.”
Clarkson, Hammond and May left Top Gear after Clarkson had a fallout with producer Oisin Tymon and the popular BBC show will now be hosted by Chris Evans.
