Netflix will be recast in the role of the bad guy next year. The video-streaming service was once derided as the “Albanian army” by the Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes, but now is worth roughly the same $50 billion as his company. It may be too late for media bosses to do much about this beast, with some 69 million subscribers worldwide, that they helped create.

It wasn’t long ago when TV and movie producers considered Netflix something of a hero. The company became a new buyer of programming. Now, however, the increasing popularity of Netflix is contributing to the erosion of pay TV, the more lucrative and predictable source of revenue. Consumers are starting to ditch expensive cable bills in favor of services like Netflix. By 2020, SNL Kagan forecasts that 82 percent of United States households will be pay-TV subscribers, down from a peak of 88 percent in 2011.

That’s one reason Mr. Bewkes, along with Twenty-First Century Fox’s chief executive, James Murdoch, and Walt Disney’s boss, Bob Iger, are signaling a change of heart. Mr. Murdoch, for instance, said that Fox is going to do more business with Hulu, the Netflix rival jointly owned by Fox, Comcast and Disney. Those decisions may cause other problems. The producers of the hit series “Homeland,” on the CBS-owned Showtime, for example, are concerned they’re getting a smaller cut of profit because of deals struck with Hulu, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The industry’s wariness may be futile at this point anyway. For one, Netflix’s coffers have grown too big. Its increasing scale should enable it to outspend rival networks in 2016. In programming, however, Netflix is still catching up to the likes of HBO, which recently signed up “Sesame Street” and Jon Stewart. Morgan Stanley estimates that Netflix, led by Reed Hastings, could spend as much as $2.5 billion next year in the United States, compared with HBO’s $1.8 billion and Showtime’s $700 million.