After years of rapid expansion, Netflix has faced profits challenges from its board for the past few years. However, with the global recession and shrinking subscriber base, Netflix needs to find a new growing point. For technology companies, growth is everything. For the world’s largest streaming service company, the question becomes how to maintain its own growth while already owning the largest subscriber base across the globe.

Netflix decided to focus on its own content by investing in blockbuster or renowned film directors and actors. The Russo brothers, directors of Disney’s Avenger series, were invited to lead the “The Gray Man” film project, which is Netflix’s most expensive film ($200M budget) and perhaps its biggest gamble as it tries to create a spy franchise in the mold of James Bond or Mission Impossible. The audience taste has rapidly evolved in the last few years. Even with years of success, those two iconic spy franchises have tried different changes in character building and visual effects to adapt to the current audience. Should Netflix’s plan work facing the ever changing consumer habits? 

Ambition is expensive, so is the price to get out of a company’s lowest period. Netflix’s first-quarter earnings led to a precipitous drop in its stock price, and it has since laid off hundreds of employees, announced that it will create a less expensive subscription tier featuring commercials as it plans to crack down on password sharing between friends and family.

Despite the current rough patch, Netflix is still the most powerful streaming service company with deep pockets that no other film studio in Hollywood can match. As the best technology advancement disrupts an established industry, Netflix has already changed the way current people watch films.