Wet Hot American Summer Rumored For Netflix As Sub Service Takes 'The Crown'

In a constant bid to dominate the ever-changing streaming-subscription landscape, Netflix are ordering their first British original drama, The Crown, a series inspired by the life of The Queen of England, while Wet Hot American Summer may be adapted into a prequel series.

The Crown is set to be a mammoth 20 episodes in length, with reports suggesting that Netflix will be laying down £5m per episode. "What our members love watching most and what we have focused on with our own series are highly-serialised stories," Netflix's spokesman for Europe, Joris Evers told the BBC last month.

"We like the kind of series that have a longer story arc where, over multiple episodes and multiple seasons, you follow a storyline as opposed to a procedural show... where somebody gets killed in the first 10 minutes and within that hour you find out who it was and they get locked up."

This is just the latest in Netflix’s successful efforts to build a strong platform for original television, with House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey and Orange is The New Black proving to be hugely popular. And with ITV and The BBC both having shown interest, it shows Netflix’s power to negotiate with big TV bosses over where shows will end up.

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And that kind of haggling might be taking place right now with Wet Hot American Summer as a prequel to the cult favourite 2001 movie is rumoured to be hitting the streaming site. It chronicled the last day at Camp Firewood in 1981 Maine as counselors and campers attempted to bring the respective summers to a satisfactory close.

Variety’s sources say: “the serialized Wet Hot would seek to reunite many of the original cast members who would play high-school-age characters despite the fact many of the actors are currently in their 40s.”