It’s tough to pivot a streaming company worth more than $370 billion, especially when you’ve focused as aggressively on one thing, for years, as Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has. In his latest attempt to reassure skeptics he’s serious about the theatrical business of Warner Bros. — which Netflix aims to buy for $83 billion — Sarandos made his most specific commitment yet: “We will run that business largely like it is today, with 45-day windows,” he told the New York Times in a new interview. “I’m giving you a hard number. If we’re going to be in the theatrical business, and we are, we’re competitive people — we want to win. I want to win opening weekend. I want to win box office.”
Of course, assurances in a splashy Times interview only go as far as you trust the guy, and timing this statement ahead of Netflix’s next earnings report on Tuesday may have been strategic. The company’s stock has fallen since it announced it had won the initial bidding war for Warner Bros., and an open letter railed that the company would “hold a noose around the theatrical marketplace.” That’s been one of Netflix’s hurdles throughout this process and a key talking point from supporters of the Paramount bid — the perception that as much as Netflix says it wants to be in the theatrical business, its history indicates otherwise. In its critics’ minds, short awards-contending runs and KPop Demon Hunters event weekends don’t count! And, in fact, Sarandos’s belief in the power of movie theaters appears to only go so far: “You’re not going to get in the car and go to the next town to go see a movie,” he said. Sarandos may know streaming but may not actually know how most of American suburbia works.
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But as we’ve outlined before, Netflix is capable of change, and it has never made a purchase of this size. It’s entirely possible that Sarandos gazes upon his replica of the Citizen Kane Rosebud sled at night and dreams of the big screen. In the Times interview, he does joke that he’s doing this “mostly” for Jack Warner’s desk.
