Netflix has already recouped its $100 million House of Cards investment

Netflix spent around $100 million to produce the first two seasons of House of Cards, the original drama that stars Kevin Spacey as a comically oily United States congressman. But while this may sound like a big investment for the hugely popular content distributor, analysis from The Atlantic Wire shows that it may just be a drop in the bucket in the bigger scheme of things. According to The Atlantic Wire’s calculations, Netflix has already earned its $100 million back “by adding more than 2 million U.S. subscribers this quarter and another 1 million elsewhere in the world,” thus giving Netflix a strong incentive to produce more original content going forward. Netflix posted impressive earnings on Monday and announced that its subscriber base in the United States had risen to over 29 million, thus giving it more American subscribers than HBO.