The streamer initially pledged $100 to the out-of-work production community last month.
With no end in sight to Hollywood's widespread work stoppage due to the novel coronavirus, Netflix has upped its relief fund for the now-unemployed production community.
The fund's amount has been increased by 50 percent to $150 million, a company spokesperson confirmed on Friday morning. Netflix initially pledged $100 million to the out-of-work production community in mid-March after it paused its many productions across the globe.
Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke up at the time about the pandemic's unprecedented effect on the filming community. "Most of the fund will go towards support for the hardest hit workers on our own productions around the world,” he said, adding that the money would be handed out in addition to the two weeks of pay they company promised cast and crew on suspended productions.
Separately, Netflix announced this morning that it had teamed with The Netherlands Film Fund to launch a new relief fund for film and TV production in the Netherlands. The streamer will make 1 million euro available in the country to jumpstart the fund, which is expected to be administered by the producers of the affected productions and go to the most vulnerable freelancers.
"We want to do our part to help those who most need our support in these unprecedented times," said Lina Brouneus, director of co-production and acquisition at Netflix.
That donation adds to the many pledges Netflix has made to various industry organizations amid the virus outbreak. The company has already given $1 million each to SAG-AFTRA, the Actors Fund and the Television Fund in the U.S. Netflix has also given roughly the equivalent to AFC in Canada, the British Film Institute in England, the Italian Film Commission in Italy, Audiens in France, the Producers Guild of India and the Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas in Mexico.
