Netflix Announces Pornhub Documentary

'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story' premieres on March 15

Photo courtesy of Netflix

BY Megan LaPierrePublished Feb 15, 2023

Netflix may be cracking down on password sharing, but the company is attempting to, erm, spread the love in another way. The streaming giant has announced an upcoming documentary about Pornhub, the controversy-embroiled adult entertainment website.

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story premieres on Netflix on March 15. Through in-depth interviews with performers, activists and former employees, the film will shed light on Pornhub's ascent — from its 2007 founding to the course it charted to alter the landscape of the pornography industry.

The billion-dollar platform has allowed content creators to reach an unimaginably big audience of celebrity and fictional character-ogling freaks and sickos, but, in February 2021, the backlash against its questionable ethics spiked massively when Pornhub's parent company MindGeek was sued by several plaintiffs.

The civil class action lawsuit accused the website of profiting off the distribution of explicit videos of victims of child sex trafficking and other non-consensual material. (Of course, that's not to mention the monopoly MindGeek had been criticized for having in the porn industry, something comparable to the Ticketmaster-Live Nation relationship that has recently come under fire by both fans and performers.)

It's safe to assume there'll be plenty to dig into in the doc. The streamer's synopsis of Money Shot reads, "As anti-trafficking organizations seek justice for victims, can the online giant protect those from whom they profit, or is this a new wave of censorship for adult performers making consensual porn?"

Director/producer Suzanne Hillinger said in a statement: "This documentary requires us to grapple with what sexuality and consent means when billion-dollar internet platforms thrive on user-generated content. Who has, and who should have, the power in these environments? Our hope is that this film generates important conversations about sex and consent, both on the internet and out in the world."

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