After an intense race to sign the former Top Gear trio for a new project ended with a £160 million deal with Amazon Prime, it looks like Netflix is stating its interest early for the rights to broadcast the BBC's newly-revamped Chris Evans-led series.
Reports from The Guardian suggest that the streaming service is in very early talks with the BBC to take up the airing rights for the series.
If talks for the deal continue and an agreement is reached, Netflix could begin to stream the new series in autumn, around the time when Clarkson's Amazon show is set to premiere.
Netflix already airs old episodes of Top Gear to subscribers in the US, Canada, Australia and throughout Western Europe, but passed over the chance to launch a new show with Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May by saying the cost of the deal was not worth it.
Speaking to Digital Spy last year, Netflix's Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt said: "Our buying decisions tend to be somewhat data-driven. We have a lot of data to get the deals we want, so there we go.
"Clearly it wasn't worth the money to make the deal... I think they sold themselves for way more money [than they're worth]."
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He also later added: "There is an audience for everything and it is not up to us to judge if Amazon has paid too much or not."
Top Gear returns to BBC Two in May 2016, with lead Chris Evans being joined by co-hosts Matt LeBlanc, Eddie Jordan, Sabine Schmitz, Chris Harris and Rory Reid.
