Barack Obama announced Saturday April 18 that Higher Ground, the production company he runs with Michelle Obama, will become an independent operation when its current deal with Netflix expires later this year.
He made the disclosure on stage at HistoryTalks, a special edition of the History Channel speaker series held in Philadelphia as part of the broader celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. He was in conversation with historian Jon Meacham.
“We’re very grateful for the launch that happened,” Obama said of the Netflix partnership, before adding that the company is “in a process now of transitioning to a more independent future where we can work with a bunch of different studios.”
The Netflix first-look deal, which replaced a more exclusive arrangement in 2024, has not yet ended. It expires later in 2026.
When it does, Higher Ground will be free to take projects to any buyer without offering Netflix the first look. That transition is already underway.
The Obamas Eight Year Run With Netflix
Higher Ground launched in 2018 with an exclusive overall deal at Netflix, the kind of arrangement that was common in the streamer’s early content spending era, where Netflix paid top dollar to lock up talent exclusively.
The Obamas started the company with a specific mandate. Barack Obama described it at the Philadelphia event as an attempt “to see if we could lift up some stories that help make America look at itself and excavate those better angels of our nature.”
Over the eight years of the partnership, Higher Ground produced 24 projects spanning documentary, scripted series, unscripted content, sports and family programming.
The track record includes the Oscar-winning American Factory, a documentary about a Chinese company taking over a shuttered General Motors plant in Ohio that won Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards.
Three of Higher Ground’s films have received Academy Award nominations, American Factory, Rustin and American Symphony. The company accumulated 12 Emmy nominations and six Emmy wins.
Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, the apocalyptic thriller with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali, was one of Netflix’s most-watched films.
Crip Camp, the documentary about a disability rights movement born from a 1970s summer camp, became a widely discussed film about activism and identity.
Bodkin, a dark comedy series starring Will Forte about true crime podcasters in rural Ireland, came later.
Not every project landed. The company had high-profile executive turnover along the way, co-head of film and TV Priya Swaminathan left in 2021, motion pictures head Tonia Davis left her formal role in 2024 (though continued producing), and company president Vinnie Malhotra departed in December 2025.
The exits reflect the difficulty of running a production company inside a single-platform deal as the streaming landscape kept shifting.
In 2024, Netflix and Higher Ground restructured. Instead of the exclusive overall arrangement, they moved to a first-look deal, Netflix still got first crack at new projects, but Higher Ground could shop elsewhere if Netflix passed.
That structure gave the company room to start building outside relationships while technically still Netflix-first, and they used it.
Where Is Higher Ground Headed Now?
By the time Obama made the announcement, Higher Ground had already set up projects across a wide range of platforms, HBO, Apple TV+, Amazon Studios, FX, Disney, 20th Century Studios, Artists Equity, Laika, AMC, CBS Studios and YouTube.
Going fully independent simply formalizes what they have been doing under the cover of the first-look arrangement.
The most immediate outside project is on HBO. Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness is a half-hour sketch comedy series developed with Larry David and Jeff Schaffer.
It is set to premiere this summer, timed deliberately to coincide with America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.
The project was announced last month at SXSW during a panel with David and Schaffer. Barack Obama will appear in the show with a cameo.
Higher Ground has also moved into Broadway for the first time. The company is co-producing a revival of PROOF, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a mathematician’s daughter navigating grief and genius.
This production stars Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle, directed by Thomas Kail and produced by Mike Bosner.
It opened Thursday April 16, two days before Obama’s announcement in Philadelphia, and runs through July 19, 2026.
The Obamas attended the Saturday evening performance and went backstage to meet the cast, Auburn, Kail and Bosner.
In audio, Higher Ground has been building a podcast portfolio. Obama described the company as recently completing a six or seven-part series on Reconstruction, the post-Civil War era, featuring Obama in conversation with Malcolm Gladwell and a group of historians and experts.
Obama said he sees Reconstruction as essential context for understanding the current moment in America.
Michelle Obama co-hosts a separate podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, alongside her brother. The company also has Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso and The Second Opinion in its audio slate.
The Event Where He Said It
The Philadelphia setting was not accidental. Obama made the announcement at HistoryTalks, a speaker series run by the History Channel in its special edition format, presented as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary events.
The broader gathering brought together an unusual cross-section of American public life. In addition to both Obamas, the event featured Joe and Dr. Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, a rare assembly of living former presidents in one place.
The celebrity contingent included Nicole Kidman, Tina Fey, Colin Jost, Garth Brooks, Tom Brady, Ted Danson, Kate McKinnon, Jason Kelce, Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb.
Both Barack and Michelle Obama appeared on separate panels. Obama’s conversation with Meacham covered Higher Ground’s past and future, its original mission, and what the company is trying to do as it enters its next chapter.
Will Higher Ground Be As Successful Without Netflix?
Going independent does not mean walking away from Netflix entirely. Higher Ground can still develop and produce for Netflix, it just won’t be obligated to offer them projects first.
The relationship becomes transactional rather than structural. Netflix remains one potential buyer among many, not the default destination.
What changes is the creative flexibility. A production company operating without a first-look is free to take any project to any platform from day one, which means following the best creative and commercial fit rather than a contractual obligation.
For a company that has defined itself by the weight of its subject matter, industrial decline, disability rights, civil rights history, the American founding, broader access to buyers means broader access to audiences.
Obama put it plainly at the HistoryTalks event, in the language he has used consistently to describe why the company exists. The goal was always to help America look at itself. The infrastructure for doing that is now changing. The goal, he suggested, is not.
