Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said that Netflix will continue to release Warner Bros films in cinemas “largely like it is today, with 45-day windows”.
Speaking on the assumption that Netflix’s $83bn offer for the Warner Bros streaming and studios business will close – Paramount is still in hot pursuit – Sarandos said on Friday: “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. I’m giving you a hard number,” he told The New York Times in an interview. ”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.”
While the commitment to a “hard number” is new, Sarandos did not clarify whether this is a blanket policy for all Warner Bros and New Line releases. The exhibition community, which has weathered an uneasy and at times combative relationship with the streamer and sees it as antithetical to their business model, may still harbour concerns that smaller films will stay on screens for shorter periods.
However Sarandos is now saying that when he and his team studied the Warner Bros business during their due diligence process, they were surprised.
“The general economics of the theatrical business were more positive than we had seen and we had modeled for ourselves,” he said. “It’s a healthy, profitable business for them. We weren’t in that business not because we hated it. We weren’t in that business because our business was doing so well.”
Netflix’s theatrical strategy until now has been to use cinemas for Oscar-qualifying runs or in special cases like last year’s weekend-only release of KPop Demon Hunters, the animated smash that just won two Golden Globes and is a firm Oscar favourite in the animated feature and original song categories.
There is also the upcoming year-end release of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia, which will play exclusively on Imax for two weeks starting on November 26 followed by a two-week gap before it debuts on Netflix on December 25.
This has drawn the ire of the exhibition community, with Vue Entertainment CO Tim Richards opining to the press: “Imax and Netflix may enjoy a short-term gain, but the industry and audiences around the world will lose. Millions of families who would love to watch Narnia at a theatre will be needlessly deprived of the opportunity.”
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