Epic lease: Netflix inks massive deal with Hudson Properties

Netflix is leasing the entirety of not just one Hollywood office tower, but two.

The top Internet video streaming service has signed on to occupy all of Hudson Pacific Properties’ 13-story Epic office development, which is under construction at 5901 Sunset Boulevard.

The building, which will span 327,913 square feet, is across the street from the Sunset Bronson Studios lot, where Netflix is also extending two other leases with HPP.

The extensions are for a similarly large space at HPP’s 14-story Icon building and a 92,000-square-foot space at the Cue building. That brings Netflix’s total square footage around Sunset Bronson Studios to over 745,600 square feet. CBS and KTLA also lease space there.

Netflix is scheduled to move into Epic in January 2020 when the Gensler-designed project is expected to wrap up construction. It will occupy it in phases.

HPP broke ground on the Epic building in September 2017, a few months after settling a lawsuit with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation over the project. HPP reduced its height from 15 stories to 13 as part of the settlement.

The Epic building includes a number of terraces and floor-to-ceiling windows that open to allow access to them. There’s also a rooftop deck. Altogether, there is 25,000 square feet of outdoor space. HPP says its also equipped for “next-generation office needs” like autonomous vehicle drop-off and drone deliveries.

HPP did not list its leasing agents, but tapped CBRE to lease the building after it successfully leased the Sunset Bronson Studios spaces to Netflix.

Netflix is at the center of a multibillion-dollar battle over the subscriptions and eyeballs of consumers. Goldman Sachs projected earlier this year that Netflix would spend around $13 billion on programming in 2018 alone, more than twice what it spent in 2017.

Earlier this week, Showtime president and CEO David Nevins called the competition over original content alone “an arms race,” according to entertainment site AV Club.

Just how crazy an arms race? Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel series is expected to cost $1 billion, according to the Hollywood Reporter.