What will the future of Net­flix look like?

This week marked a major mile­stone for Net­flix, as the video-stream­ing plat­form broke into the Best Pic­ture cat­e­go­ry at the Acad­e­my Awards for the very first time. But while the suc­cess of Roma sig­nalled a new era of indus­try legit­i­ma­cy for its dis­trib­u­tor, a hand­ful of sep­a­rate devel­op­ments have called the future of the still-nascent Hol­ly­wood play­er into question.

Last week, Net­flix announced that they would imple­ment a new sub­scrip­tion fee hike in 2019, rais­ing the most com­mon plan from $11 to $13 per month — the steep­est sin­gle bump in price since the company’s found­ing. The bare-bones plan would get kicked up from $8 to $9, and their more deluxe plan would rise from $14 to $16.

This change has reignit­ed a con­ver­sa­tion about adver­tis­ing that first began back in the sum­mer. In 2018, Net­flix intro­duced pro­mo­tion­al videos for oth­er pro­gram­ming that played before their own orig­i­nal releas­es, and users imme­di­ate­ly cried foul. The mere prospect of out­side adver­tis­ing would be enough to send Net­flix sub­scribers into fits, and now we’ve got hard proof.

A new study from Net Imper­a­tive polled UK users with a sim­ple inquiry: Would you can­cel your account if Net­flix added com­mer­cials? A whop­ping 57% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they would call it quits if Net­flix was to bring prop­er adver­tis­ing into their busi­ness model.

All of this, along with the news that Net­flix has joined the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca as the first non-Hol­ly­wood enti­ty rec­og­nized by the orga­ni­za­tion, promis­es major shake-ups on the hori­zon. Gar­gan­tu­an as it may already be, Net­flix intends on con­tin­u­ing to grow, and the only way for that to hap­pen is through rethink­ing and pos­si­ble restructuring.

Whether they sab­o­tage them­selves a lit­tle on the way? That has yet to be seen.