I can see it working but it's a big gamble. In a nutshell there are a few categories of funds needed by a business: startup costs (building, enhancements, equipment, etc), fixed costs (your monthly bills including payroll, utilities, service contracts, etc.), and variable costs (depends on the interest, but here it would be the costs to make a film or series - the more films/series, the more it costs). The revenue then goes against these expenses, and there's a break even point where you make X number of widgets and take in enough revenue (from sales, licensing, etc.) to cover the costs.
You would think that Netflix has saturated the market by now, so how does throwing more money at content generate more revenue? Netflix has obviously done some thinking.
More original content would mean less licensing films and TV shows from other companies. And they need a bootstrap to produce enough to begin to be free of other studios and distributors. But then where do we go for all the shows that brought us to Netflix? Maybe it's Plan B.
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Original content is still key, but perhaps Netflix knows about other markets, like PPV. I don't have any idea how much people pay for films that were recently in theaters and are now in PPV. It could be that Netflix wants to do more films that are either screened broadly or maybe limited run and then charge a few more bucks to watch them.
Whatever they do it's a lot of money and a big risk. The markets are not looking favorably at tech right now, either. I'd be cautious.
