Netflix in Talks to Buy Radford Studio Center at Deep Discount

Netflix is in talks to buy Radford Studio Center in the San Fernando Valley at a steep discount from its pre-pandemic valuation, a deal that would plant one of the world’s biggest streaming companies directly in the middle of the region’s historic production corridor.

Radford Studio Center sits in Studio City, just over the hill from Burbank, and the property has anchored San Fernando Valley film and television production for decades. The lot traces its roots to the early days of Hollywood and has hosted hundreds of productions over the years. If Netflix closes this deal, the company would control a major physical footprint in the Valley at a price that reflects the battered state of the commercial real estate market and the broader contraction in studio spending that has squeezed the industry since 2023.

The exact purchase price has not been confirmed publicly, but reporting on the negotiations describes the figure as a deep discount from what the property commanded before the pandemic changed everything about how studios evaluate physical space. That’s a meaningful shift. Studio lots in the Valley once carried premium valuations, and the idea that a flagship production facility could change hands at a bargain price would have sounded far-fetched five years ago.

For the local economy, the stakes are real.

Radford employs crew members, technicians, stage operators, and support staff whose jobs depend on steady production activity on the lot. Burbank and the surrounding communities have felt the ripple effects of industry slowdowns hard. The California Film Commission has worked to keep productions in state through its tax credit program, and having Netflix commit to a permanent, owned facility in the Valley rather than renting space elsewhere would help stabilize local employment in the trades.

Netflix already operates out of leased space in the region and has been expanding its physical production infrastructure across the country. Buying Radford would give the company something it can’t easily replicate by renting: permanence. Owned stages, standing sets, and dedicated back-lot space let a studio control its own production calendar without competing for availability at third-party facilities. That kind of operational control matters when you’re producing the volume of content Netflix generates every year.

The deal also signals something about where the streaming giant sees its future. Critics spent years questioning whether streaming companies would ever commit to the brick-and-mortar infrastructure that traditional Hollywood studios built over generations. Netflix answered part of that question when it bought and renovated the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Radford would be a much larger bet, covering sound stages, production offices, and outdoor shooting areas spread across a substantial lot in Studio City.

Nobody should expect this to come cheap, even at a discount.

Major studio property transactions involve complex negotiations over environmental assessments, title conditions, existing lease agreements with current tenants, and zoning considerations that can drag timelines well beyond an initial handshake. The talks are ongoing, and deals like this one can stall or fall apart entirely before any paperwork gets signed.

Still, the trajectory is hard to ignore. Netflix has spent years moving from a company that licensed content from studios to one that competes directly with them, and owning a major San Fernando Valley lot would be a concrete expression of that ambition.

For Burbank readers, the geographic proximity matters. Radford sits close enough to Burbank’s own production infrastructure that activity on that lot feeds directly into the local economy, including the restaurants, equipment houses, and post-production facilities that depend on active shoots nearby. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation has tracked the entertainment industry’s footprint in the region for years, and a major ownership change at a property like Radford tends to reshape production patterns across multiple surrounding neighborhoods.

“The studio lot market in Los Angeles is going through a fundamental reset, and buyers who move now stand to benefit significantly,” one real estate analyst familiar with Valley commercial property told the Los Angeles Daily News in background comments on the broader market.

Netflix has not made a formal announcement confirming the deal. If the acquisition closes, it would rank among the more consequential entertainment real estate transactions the San Fernando Valley has seen in the past decade, and it would position Netflix as more than a tenant in the region where so much of its content actually gets made.