Netflix paid about $587 million in cash to buy Ben Affleck's company in March
Key Facts
Netflix completed its acquisition of InterPositive, the filmmaking technology company founded by Ben Affleck, in March 2026 for a purchase price of approximately $587 million in cash, according to its financial filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company announced the deal on March 5, 2026, bringing in a team developing artificial intelligence tools tailored to film production needs. Netflix did not disclose financial terms when it first announced the acquisition, according to Reuters coverage published at the time. The subsequent financial filing specified the consideration paid to complete the transaction, stating that the purchase price consisted of cash consideration. The deal brought InterPositive's entire team to Netflix, with Affleck joining as a senior adviser, according to the company's announcement.
InterPositive dates back to 2022, when Affleck founded it after observing that available AI models did not meet film production needs, according to entertainment industry publication TheWrap. Affleck assembled a team of about 16 people, including engineers, researchers, creatives and producers, to develop the model, according to the publication's coverage. Development of the technology began by filming a proprietary dataset on a controlled set that replicated actual production conditions, Affleck explained in Netflix's acquisition announcement. He said this foundational work yielded smaller datasets and models focused on filmmaking techniques. He described those models' focus as "filmmaking techniques rather than acting performances," defining the work from which the company's tools were developed.
Affleck said the model addresses challenges that arise during actual production, including missing shots faced by filmmaking teams. Its uses also include replacing backgrounds and correcting unsuitable lighting, tasks he cited among the problems the technology was designed to address. He summed up examples of these challenges as "missing shots or replacing backgrounds or incorrect lighting." Alongside developing these capabilities, Affleck said the team built constraints to protect creative intent when using the tools. He added that those constraints were intended to keep artistic decisions in artists' hands, as part of the team's approach to building the technology.
The acquisition is part of Netflix's broader expansion of generative AI use across its operations, according to its shareholder letter accompanying its second-quarter results. The company said workflows using these tools had been deployed in about 300 productions during 2026 by the time the letter was released. Use was concentrated in post-production, according to Netflix's description of how the technology was applied across its productions. Applications included enhancing crowd scenes, historical battle scenes and establishing shots used to build dramatic worlds. Netflix said its wider use of these tools enables higher-quality output, faster and at a lower cost than traditional methods.
In the latest results available at the time of publication, Netflix reported operating profit of about $4.5 billion for the third quarter of 2026, according to its shareholder letter. That represented an increase of 37% from the same period a year earlier, according to the company's quarterly results. Its operating margin was 34.6% in the third quarter of 2026, compared with 28.2% in the third quarter of 2025. On access to InterPositive's tools, Affleck expressed his hope of enabling the wider creative community to access what the team is developing, saying he looked forward to "making what we're building available to the broader creative community." For the fourth quarter of 2026, Netflix expects revenue of $13.4 billion, according to the forecast in its third-quarter earnings letter.