Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos Says Theatrical Can Be ‘Inefficient’ Way to Distribute Some Films
Brian Welk
We know Netflix can’t truly be bothered with putting movies in theaters. That it has arguably left some money on the table for movies like “Glass Onion” has been well-documented, and with Scott Stuber out of the picture and now determined to make theatrical movies of his own, Netflix can continue doing what it does best in making streaming hits.
In an interview in the UK on Tuesday, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos not only did not defend theatrical and the time-tested practices of Hollywood but also said for some films, putting them into theaters just isn’t the best thing for them.
“It’s unique to Netflix that we have enough scale,” Sarandos said at the Royal Television Society’s London Convention (via THR). “We can uniquely spend $200 million on a film and have enough scale of viewership to put it directly on Netflix without trying to recover some of the economics in the theater, which I think is a fairly inefficient way to distribute some movies.”
Key word there being “some” movies, not necessarily all. A box office juggernaut like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has been a consistent performer on Netflix ever since Universal licensed it as its fourth stop after theaters, VOD, and Peacock, and it has that cultural cache because it was such a hit in theaters first.
But there’s also no debating that some movies are probably better off as streaming exclusives. It’s a lesson Apple has learned the hard way after experimenting with putting costly flops like “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon” in theaters. For the streamer’s next tentpole, the Brad Pitt-George Clooney crime thriller “Wolfs,” Apple has dramatically scaled back its theatrical rollout to a single week and will plop it on Apple TV+ the week after.
In general, Sarandos is saying that any studio in Hollywood can’t settle with the status quo: “If you ever find yourself protecting the business, you’re pretty much dead,” he said. For one, he said that the debate over how long a movie should remain in theaters before it heads to streaming is not one that literally anyone outside of the film industry is having, and it’s why he’s not concerning himself with it.
“Audiences don’t care about windows at all,” he said. “They never talk about it over dinner.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Sarandos thanked the British crowd for being the catalyst behind some of Netflix’s current biggest hits, including “The Crown,” “Baby Reindeer,” “Supacell,” and “The Gentlemen.” But he also said the current lawsuit over “Baby Reindeer” and whether or not the show is a true story is a debate “not happening anywhere else in the world” except Britain.
