Netflix honcho Ted Sarandos is on a campaign to convince everyone — shareholders, federal regulators, and filmmakers, to name but a few — that he doesn’t in fact hate movie theaters.
He told analysts during last week’s earnings call that the streaming giant “debated many times over the years whether we should build a theatrical distribution engine or not,” before deciding that it wasn’t a high enough priority. Prior to that, he told the New York Times that if Netflix successfully acquires Warner Bros., he’ll keep Warner Bros. movies in cinemas for 45 days before they stream on the small screen, a radical departure from the business model that made him (and Reed Hastings) the biggest disruptors in the history of Hollywood.
The tricky thing for the 61-year old Sarandos is that for years he’s made his resentment of the big screen, and his love of the small screen, a central part of his origin story. Whether it’s during awards show acceptance speeches or taped interviews or in magazine profiles, Sarandos has shared the childhood anecdote of growing up in a turbulent household outside Phoenix, where he found solace in the small screen (“I couldn’t always count on everything growing up but I could always count on Happy Days being on ABC Tuesday nights at 7 o’clock. That gave me order.”)
The story then veers towards his work as a clerk in a video store, but unlike Quentin Tarantino — who famously began his own career as filmmaker in the same line of work — Sarandos seemed to keep his career focus on the boob tube rather than the cinema.
Either way, as Netflix tries to close its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery while fending off Paramount, and the Ellisons, he’s in the awkward position of trying to rewrite history.
“When this deal closes, we will own a theatrical distribution engine that is phenomenal and produces billions of dollars of theatrical revenue that we don’t want to put at risk. We will run that business largely like it is today, with 45-day windows,” he said in that Times interview, adding: “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.”
He also said he had no clue why President Trump seemed to oppose the Netflix deal in a recent social media post criticizing the streamer’s bid.
