Ryan Murphy Heads to Netflix in Deal Said to Be Worth Up to $300 Million
“I am a gay kid from Indiana who moved to Hollywood in 1989 with $55 in savings in my pocket, so the fact
that my dreams have crystallized and come true in such a major way is emotional and overwhelming to me.”
Paving the way for Mr. Murphy to make the jump to streaming was the $100 million deal Netflix reached in August with the producer Shonda Rhimes, the creator of the ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.” Ms. Rhimes had been with Disney’s ABC network for a decade and made the move days after Disney announced
that it would expand its streaming offerings and eventually pull many of its products from Netflix.
The prolific producer behind “Glee,” “Nip/Tuck” and the anthology series “American Crime Story”
and “American Horror Story,” Mr. Murphy would have been a key piece in the expanded Disney empire, and Fox executives made several attempts to keep him in the corporate family.
While the agreement will come as a disappointment to the studio where Mr. Murphy has spent most of his career, it also delivers a
serious blow to the Walt Disney Company, which reached a deal in December to acquire most of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion.
He had close working relationships with Peter Rice, the president of 21st Century Fox; Dana Walden, the chairwoman of Fox’s TV group (and the godmother to Mr. Murphy’s children);
and John Landgraf, the chief executive of the FX network, a cable channel under the Fox banner.
heroes and heroines,” he said, “and I am honored and grateful to continue my partnership with my friends and peers at Fox on my existing shows.”
In his own statement, Mr. Sarandos said, “Ryan Murphy’s series have influenced the global
cultural zeitgeist, reinvented genres and changed the course of television history.
On Tuesday night, Netflix announced that it had poached the hit-making producer Ryan Murphy from 21st Century Fox.