By Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says streaming, not theatrical, is the best path for big-budget movies to take when it comes to his service.
According to THR, the remarks came during a TV industry gathering in London. Reportedly he said the streamer doesn’t feel a business need to recoup film investment with theatrical runs in cinemas.
He admits that it’s due to their massive scale that this is something unique to them and works for them, whereas smaller streamers aren’t so lucky and thus likely relies on theatrical exhibition:
“It’s unique to Netflix that we have enough scale. 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.”
Netflix makes their revenue through ads and subscriptions. Sarandos goes on to say the value proposition is what drives the streamer’s success as audiences don’t care about release windows:
“Today, our members can watch a world of entertainment for a fraction of the price of a box set of The Sopranos in 2007. And they don’t have to wait two months for all the episodes of a show to come out or for a film to finish its theatrical run. Audiences don’t care about windows at all. They never talk about it over dinner.”
He adds that when it comes to business, if you’re “protecting the business, you’re pretty much dead”. Instead, what entertainment giants need to do is “constantly challenge ourselves, to break [the business] and move our business forward on behalf of our consumers.”
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