Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and his wife, longtime donors and friends of Barack and Michelle Obama, were instrumental in getting the power couple to sign a multiyear deal to produce series and films for the video streaming service.
“We are incredibly proud they have chosen to make Netflix the home for their formidable storytelling abilities,” Sarandos said in a news release regarding the former president and first lady’s deal with Netflix.
Netflix confirmed to Fox News that Sarandos was directly involved with brokering the deal with Higher Grounds Productions, the company the Obama’s established to produce content for Netflix.
“Ted Sarandos is our chief content officer so of course he was engaged in bringing Higher Ground Productions to Netflix,” a Netflix spokesman confirmed.
Sarandos and his wife Nicole Avant donated more than $500,000 to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2012. Avant also served as the ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama administration from 2009-2011.
On Tuesday, Sarandos said that just because the Obamas were joining Netflix, didn’t mean the company was making a shift to the Left.
“It’s not the Obama Network, it’s not the MSNBC shift,” Sarandos said at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills on Tuesday. “There’s no political slate to the programming.”
