Netflix has shelled out a cool $100 million in the past month to Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock for a combined 5 stand-up specials. $60 million of that will go straight into the bank of Dave Chappelle after his enormously successful appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live two weeks ago, and he’ll only have to perform three stand-up specials (his first in 12 years) to get all of that money.
Some people work their entire lives and never make a million dollars, Dave Chappelle will make $20 million for a night on the stage, and he’ll do that three times over.
If you’ve never seen Dave Chappelle perform stand-up and only know him from Chappelle Show, here’s some footage from Killing Them Softly, which is arguably Dave’s most commercially successful stand-up show to date:
PageSix reports that Netflix keeps a ‘war chest’ for this type of content. Stating that even if Netflix takes a loss on deals like this, which it is almost certain to, the financial windfall they see from new subscribers because of exclusive stand-up specials and the press they get surrounding unique content like this more than makes up for the loss Netflix might take on an individual deal.
RELATED: The Netflix Adds And Drops For The Month Of December 2016 Are Absolutely ‘Marvelous’
The good news for Dave Chappelle fans is typically these large stand-up specials are accompanied by world tours where the comedians perfect their stage acts before the big night. So if I was a betting man I’d wager that we see multiple Dave Chappelle comedy tours announced over the next year or so.
[h/t PageSix]